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1961 in spaceflight

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Field	Value
year	1961
image	Vostok 1 after landing.jpg
caption	The Vostok 1 spacecraft, aboard which Yuri Gagarin became the first man to orbit the Earth on 12 April 1961
first	31 January
last	22 December
total	50
success	28
failed	20
partial	2
catalogued	36
firstflight
firsttrav	USSR

maidens	Atlas LV-3A Agena-B
Kosmos-2I 63S1
Saturn I (suborbital test)
retired	Atlas LV-3A Agena-A
Juno II
orbital	2
suborbital	2
totalcrew	4

Kosmos-2I 63S1 Saturn I (suborbital test) Juno II

Orbital and Suborbital launches

Main article: 1961 in spaceflight (January–June), 1961 in spaceflight (July-December)

Deep Space Rendezvous

Date (GMT)	Spacecraft	Event	Remarks
19 May	Venera 1	First flyby of Venus	Spacecraft was already non-functional as communication had been lost en route, closest approach: 100000 km

Notable creations of orbital debris

Date/Time (UTC)	Source object	Event type	Pieces tracked	Remarks
url=http://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS/_techrep/TP-1999-208856.pdf	title=Orbital Debris: A Chronology	page=18	publisher=NASA JSC	date=January 1999	access-date=13 February 2016	quote=Two hours after separating from the U.S. Transit 4-A satellite, its Able Star upper stage becomes the first known artificial object to break up unintentionally in space. The cause of the explosion is unknown. The event produces at least 294 trackable pieces, more than tripling the number of known satellites of Earth.	url-status=dead	archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20000901071135/http://ston.jsc.nasa.gov/collections/TRS/_techrep/TP-1999-208856.pdf	archive-date=1 September 2000 }}	Thor-Able upper stage of Transit 4A navigation satellite	Rocket explosion	294	First explosion of a rocket stage in orbit creating hundreds of debris pieces

Orbital launch statistics

| [ {"value":410, "color":"#484785", "label": "United States:41 (82%)"}, {"value":90, "color":"#a52a2a", "label": "Soviet Union: 9 (18%)"}, ]

Country	Launches	Successes	Failures
failures			style="text-align:left;"	style="text-align:left;"	World
9	5	4	0
41	23	16	2

By rocket

Rocket	Country	Launches	Successes	Failures	Partial failures	Remarks
Atlas LV-3A Agena-A		1	1	0	0	Retired
Atlas LV-3A Agena-B		7	2	4	1	Maiden flight
Atlas LV-3B		3	2	1	0	First orbital launch
RM-90 Blue Scout II		1	0	1	0	First orbital launch
Juno II		3	1	2	0	Retired
Kosmos-2I 63S1	USSR	2	0	2	0	Maiden flight
Molniya 8K78	USSR	2	1	1	0
Scout X-1		3	1	2	0
Thor DM-21 Ablestar		3	2	0	1
Thor DM-21 Agena-B		17	11	6	0
Thor DM-19 Delta		3	3	0	0
Vostok-K 8K72K	USSR	5	4	1	0

By orbit

Orbital regime	Launches	Achieved	Not Achieved	Accidentally Achieved	Remarks
Low Earth	41	28	13	3
Medium Earth	1	1	0	0
High Earth	6	2	4	0	Including Highly elliptical orbits
Heliocentric	2	1	1	0

References

Footnotes

References

"Venera 1". [[NASA]].
(January 1999). "Orbital Debris: A Chronology". [[Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center.

Info: Wikipedia Source

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