Exploration in Space: Chris Hadfield

It was October 4, 1957, at 7:28 pm. A small metal ball with numerous protruding antennae made its way around the Earth in a path in space. The Soviet Union (now mostly known as Russia) had gotten into space first, caused the United States of America to panic, and thus commenced the Space Race. You see, at this time these two countries had been busy trying to outdo each other to be top dog on Earth. Both the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union had tried to have the biggest army, the coolest airplanes, and the most nuclear bombs. This eventually led to each country trying to outdo each other in reaching the last frontier: outer space.

Soon enough dogs and chimpanzees were rocketing into space. Then on April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union was the first again with the first man in space. Yuri Gagarin, in his Vostok spaceship, made a complete orbit of Earth. 

The Americans were not far behind, when they sent Alan Shepard into space in the same year. Suffice to say, a competition between the two rival countries sparked a big rush into the vast unknown areas beyond our own planet. 

Over the next two decades, many new space challenges were successful and we learned huge amount about universe beyond our own planet. Most notably when NASA, the American space program, sent the first men to the moon on July 20, 1969. 

Since, then both the United States and the Soviet Union have sent many astronauts and cosmonauts (Russian astronauts) into space. Numerous space probes (travelling robots) have been sent to almost all of the planets in our solar system.

All these great moments in exploration of space were happening, but only two countries were getting to have all the fun. When were some of the other countries going to get a chance to get out into space? Well, that started to happen with arrival of the space shuttles.

When I was a boy, I remember watching the American space shuttles blast off into space. I was absolutely fascinated with those spaceships and I knew all of their names by heart: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour (there was also the practice shuttle Enterprise). For the first time in space exploration, there were spaceships big enough to sent several astronauts into space at the same time! That meant that there was room for scientists, pilots, and space experts from other countries. That meant that Canada finally had a chance to play a part in space exploration!

In 1984, Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space! Soon after that several other Canadians got the chance to fly aboard the space shuttles. The Canadians all got to do many experiments in space, some went outside on spacewalks, and a few of them got to play with the Canadarms! What were the Canadarms? They were the mechanical arms in each of the space shuttles. Most importantly, they were designed and built in Canada!

The space shuttles flew into space for about thirty years and then they were retired in 2011. However, they did manage to assist many countries with building the first long term space station: the International Space Station (ISS). This is where this guy comes in (that dude below in the spacesuit with Canadian flag on it).

His name is Chris Hadfield and he is a Canadian astronaut. Right now as I type this blog, Chris Hadfield is orbiting the Earth in the ISS. He will be spending a lot of time up in space in the ISS doing experiments and controlling the Canadarm2 (the bigger and more awesome version of the Canadarm).

If you would like to see what Chris Hadfield is doing up there in the International Space Station, you can follow his updates on his Facebook profile, or on his Google+ profile. Chris has even posted sounds from the International Space Station! You can leave him a message if you want. Ask him about exploring space!