ESA Astronaut Tim Peake visits WIRED to have a look back at pivotal moments in the history of human space flight, captured in 8 unforgettable photographs.
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00:00 I'm British astronaut Tim Peake and I'm going to be talking about some of the most
00:02 iconic moments in the history of human spaceflight for WIRED.
00:06 Behind each of these photos is a different story about humans in space.
00:10 Missions being just seconds away from failure, secret codes, and taking crazy risks.
00:17 Well, just because we can.
00:22 I guess we should start at the beginning.
00:24 The first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, strapped into his Vostok 1 capsule there.
00:31 Inside that spacecraft, there is a code that is secret, even to Yuri himself.
00:37 Yuri didn't have any control over the spacecraft at all.
00:39 It was fully automated by a computer system and mission control.
00:43 Code 125 would allow manual controls, but only in case of an emergency.
00:47 There was so much fear in the Soviet Union about defection that the code was hidden from
00:52 the cosmonauts themselves and they were only going to be told about it in the event of
00:57 an emergency.
00:58 But actually, several people did tell Yuri the code secretly before he flew, so he knew
01:01 what it would be.
01:04 What you may not realise is that on the front of his helmet there, he's got the letters
01:09 CCCP to represent the Soviet Union.
01:12 It was painted on at the very last moment.
01:14 The Soviets realised this iconic moment.
01:17 There was nothing to identify him as a Soviet cosmonaut.
01:20 So one of the engineers grabbed his helmet and painted those letters on.
01:25 That paint is still wet right there in his capsule.
01:34 The launch didn't actually go completely according to plan.
01:36 Yuri went into a higher orbit than was expected.
01:39 They didn't bother telling him about it.
01:41 There really wasn't much he could do about it anyway.
01:43 And he didn't land in his spacecraft either.
01:45 The Vostok ejected the cosmonauts out and they actually parachuted back down to Earth.
01:52 And upon landing, Yuri was greeted by a very shocked farmer, who he asked to call Moscow.
01:59 Valentina Tereshkova, first female to fly into space.
02:03 Actually, this was part of the space race.
02:06 The Soviets had got wind of a woman in space programme over in the United States, trying
02:11 to see if any of the physiological differences between women and men would create an advantage
02:17 for flying female astronauts into space.
02:19 No surprise, they didn't just pass it, they actually performed in about the top 2% of
02:23 their male counterparts.
02:25 When the Soviets got wind of this programme, they thought, well, we're not going to get
02:28 pipped at the post.
02:29 And so they went for their own selection process and subsequently flew Valentina Tereshkova
02:33 as the first female in space.
02:36 And the woman in space programme?
02:38 It was just a study.
02:39 In fact, it was over 20 years until the first American woman flew to space.
02:46 We've got Ed White here, the first American to do a spacewalk.
02:50 The United States had wanted to be the first nation, but 10 weeks earlier, Alexei Leonov
02:55 had gone outside of his spacecraft and done the first ever spacewalk.
03:00 And it wasn't without risk.
03:02 Leonov's spacesuit expanded so much in the vacuum of space, he had to depressurise his
03:05 own suit to get back in.
03:07 The United States realised that their first spacewalk better be something a little bit
03:11 more impressive than just opening the hatch and poking your head out.
03:14 Beautiful.
03:15 I feel like a million dollars.
03:18 Also you may not know that on his spacewalk, he lost a glove with the hatch open to the
03:23 capsule.
03:24 Looks like a thermal glove, Jim.
03:25 It is, Ed.
03:26 Wow.
03:27 This has happened several times since.
03:31 Like when this $100,000 toolbox floated away from this NASA astronaut in 2008.
03:36 Oh great.
03:39 The toolbag circled Earth over eight months before burning into a fireball and destroying
03:43 itself over the Pacific Ocean.
03:45 The other thing both of them realised is that there are no handrails at all on the outside
03:50 of these capsules.
03:51 They're floating around on umbilicals here, out in space.
03:54 At one point, Ed was wiping himself over the windshield of the capsule and his crewmate
04:00 inside was kind of saying, 'Hey, you know, get yourself off my spacecraft.'
04:04 Possibly one of the most iconic photographs in the history of human spaceflight.
04:10 If you zoom in, then you'll actually see Neil taking that photograph reflected in the
04:16 gold visor of Buzz Aldrin.
04:18 It nearly didn't happen, of course.
04:19 Neil nearly ran out of fuel coming down to the surface.
04:25 The fuel got lower than it had ever become in any of the simulations, in any of the training
04:29 scenarios.
04:31 Bringing the lander module down to the surface, it was kicking up all this lunar dust.
04:36 And he wasn't able to even see his landing site.
04:41 Was the lunar landing module just going to sink several feet into lunar dust?
04:45 Were the astronauts going to sink up into their knees and not be able to actually walk
04:50 anywhere at all?
04:51 Neil had the cool presence of mind to just continue on, not worry about the fuel.
04:56 So when the landing module touched down, the only way they realised they were on the surface
05:01 is when the contact light came on.
05:04 And the engines were cut.
05:05 'Okay, engine stop.
05:06 Tranquility base here.
05:07 The Eagle has landed.'
05:08 'You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue.
05:09 We're breathing again.
05:10 Thanks a lot.'
05:11 And you think, wow, to have had such an incredible technical achievement, but actually still
05:21 to have had so many unknowns.
05:23 At some point, you have to do it.
05:25 You have to be the first.
05:26 And these were the first people to experience that.
05:32 This photograph actually became known just as the poster.
05:35 It adorned many bedroom walls of teenage kids and younger who would just stick it up and
05:42 look at that iconic image of a human floating out there, untethered.
05:47 The feeling of exposure and vulnerability in that suit.
05:51 The risk was palpable.
05:53 Even if one of those thrusters had just got stuck in the on position as he was manoeuvring
05:59 around, that would be it.
06:00 Game over.
06:01 Bruce would be off, lost forever into the cosmos.
06:03 And you could arguably say, well, what was the point of that?
06:05 What was the higher purpose?
06:07 Perhaps there wasn't one.
06:08 This was just like the jet ski of the spacewalking world, just because we can do it.
06:13 Let's go out there and do it and have fun.
06:15 Another thing you may not realise in this photograph is he was shivering and freezing
06:19 cold.
06:20 Although the poster looks like the most serene, the most tranquil event ever for Bruce at
06:25 the time, it was pretty hard work.
06:29 Peggy Whitson, June 5th, 2002.
06:32 This spacewalk really just shows how far we've come.
06:36 Now being able to perform eight hour, very complex missions outside the space station.
06:43 Space went from being a very competitive race between two nations to a very collaborative
06:48 period in low Earth orbit.
06:50 And so having been working apart during the space race, let's build a space station together
06:55 called the International Space Station as we know it today.
07:02 This next photograph is Frank Rubio.
07:04 One of the best things about space is playing with your food and water, frankly.
07:07 And when you get a bubble of water in front of you, it just makes you realise how different
07:12 the weightless environment is.
07:14 We've gone beyond the days of just building a space station.
07:17 We're spending huge amounts of time now in space.
07:20 We're using it as a microgravity laboratory and science that's becoming more and more
07:24 valuable by the day as we realise what you can do in weightlessness.
07:33 So fast forward to today and looking to the future with Artemis 2, not far away now.
07:39 The first crew to return to lunar orbit for over 50 years.
07:43 It's a little bit of a space race starting again though because Russia isn't part of
07:47 that partnership, neither is China.
07:49 Other nations such as India having a very dynamic space programme, landing a rover on
07:54 the south pole of the moon.
07:56 This new era of space exploration as we move outside of low Earth orbit once more, it's
08:02 going to be a very exciting five to ten years ahead.
08:04 (upbeat music)
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