Abstract:
SPACE ANNIVERSARY Today marks an
important day in the history of manned space
flights. Exactly 50 years ago, Soviet
cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made the first
manned space journey. Twenty years later, on
the same day, space shuttle Columbia was
launched. Eventually, Columbia met its end in
February 2003, killing its seven astronauts
including Kalpana Chawla, while re-entering
the earth’s atmosphere, writes C Sivaram
