Jan 1: Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, Soviet Union: Russia launches “First Cosmic Ship,” later dubbed Mechta and later dubbed Luna 1. Originally intended to hit the moon, a malfunction caused it to miss the moon by 6,000 km at its closest. Nevertheless, Luna 1 achieved several scientific historic “firsts,” including, amongst others:
• the first man-made object to reach escape velocity from the earth’s gravitational field
• the first ever detection and observations of the solar wind
• the first man-made object to reach heliocentric orbit (orbit around the sun)
– after it missed its intended goal of crashing into the moon.