Home > 1961 in science

The year 1961 in science and technology included many events, some of which are listed below.

1 Astronomy and space exploration

• January 31 - Ham, a 37 pound male chimpanzee, was rocketed into space in a test of the Project Mercury capsule designed to carry U.S. astronauts into space.
• April 12 - Yuri Gagarin is the first human in space.
• May 19 - Venera program: Venera 1Venera 1 was the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. The probe consisted of a cylindrical body topped by a dome, totaling 2 meters in height. Two solar panels extended radially from the cylinder. A large (over 2 meter diameter) high-gain net antenna was use becomes the first manmade object to fly-by another planet by passing VenusVenus is the second planet from the Sun, named after the Roman goddess Venus. It is a terrestrial planet, very similar in size and bulk composition to Earth; it is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" as a result of this similarity. Although all plane (however the probe had lost contact with earth a month earlier and did not send back any data).
• May 25May 25 is the 145th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (146th in leap years). There are 220 days remaining. Events 1085 Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain back from the Moors. 1420 Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Ch - Apollo program: President KennedyJohn Fitzgerald Kennedy ( May 29, 1917 November 22, 1963), often referred to as Jack Kennedy or JFK was the 35th ( 1961 1963) President of the United States. He was the youngest ever to be elected president and the youngest president ever to die in office announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moonFor other moons in the solar system see natural satellite. For other uses see Moon (disambiguation). The Moon is the only natural satellite of Earth. It has no formal name other than "The Moon" although it is occasionally called Luna ( Latin for moon to d" before the end of the decade.

• The first quasarA quasar (from quasi-stellar radio source is an astronomical object that looks like a star in optical telescopes (i. it is a point source), and has a very high redshift. The general consensus is that this high redshift is cosmological, the result of Hubbl is discovered by Allan Sandage at Mt Palomar, California

2 Physics

• February 14 - Discovery of the chemical elements: Element 103, Lawrencium, is first synthesized ( Berkeley, California).