Memorize 79 Human Spaceflight Records: From Sputnik 1 to Polaris Dawn
Study 79 space mission flashcards: Gagarin, Apollo, ISS, Kononenko's 1,111 days, Parker's 191.7 km/s, plus the cards Artemis II made obsolete in 2026.
Studying. But it's also a video game. 🎮
Flashcards, quizzes and games that make you actually remember.
Posted by
FLIP IT TeamRelated reading
Astrophysics & Cosmology Study Guide: 65 Flashcards from Fraunhofer Lines to Lambda-CDM
Study astrophysics and cosmology with 65 flashcards: Fraunhofer lines, H-R diagram, pulsars, Lambda-CDM — plus the fixes and cosmology numbers to add.
Constellations Study Guide: 66 Flashcards from Ptolemy's 48 to the IAU's 88
Deck WM1727 covers 66 constellation flashcards: asterisms, zodiac, Bayer designations, dark cloud constellations. Real cards, overlaps to merge, 3 gaps to fill.
Memorize 100 Astronomy Terms: A Glossary from Absolute Magnitude to the Main Sequence
Memorize 100 astronomy glossary flashcards: albedo, parsec, barycenter, brown dwarfs, precession and more, with a study order built from the deck structure.
Despite its title, the Flip It deck KZ2835 — Space Missions: Historic, Current & Future (79 cards) is not a mission catalogue. It is a deck of human spaceflight records: firsts, durations, speeds, ages and national totals, from Sputnik 1 to Polaris Dawn. There is no card on Artemis, Gateway, Mars sample return or any other future mission, and only three uncrewed craft appear (Sputnik 1, Voyager 1, Parker Solar Probe). Study it for what it is: the record book of people in space.
Study this deck: Space Missions: Historic, Current & Future
1 / 10First artificial orbital satellite
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
Sample cards
| Front | Back |
|---|---|
| Who was the first American to orbit the Earth? | John Glenn, on Mercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) on February 20, 1962 |
| Which country was the third to independently launch humans into orbit? | China, with Shenzhou 5 carrying Yang Liwei on October 15, 2003 |
| Who holds the record for most time in space? | Oleg Kononenko, with 1,111 days in space over five missions |
| Record for longest single spaceflight by a woman | Christina Koch, with 328 days, returning on February 6, 2020 |
| Record speed for uncrewed spacecraft | Parker Solar Probe at 191.7 km/s, first reached in December 2024 |
| Highest altitude for a crewed non-lunar mission | Polaris Dawn crew reached 1,408.10 km on September 11, 2024 |
| Kármán line | The FAI definition of the space border at 100 km (62.14 mi) altitude |
| Who was the youngest person to reach orbital spaceflight? | Gherman Titov, aged 25, on Vostok 2 on August 6, 1961 |
Covered: Sputnik 1, Yuri Gagarin, Vostok 1 and 6, Valentina Tereshkova, Alan Shepard, Freedom 7, Gemini 6A and 7 (first rendezvous, 1965), Gemini 5, Apollo 10, 11, 13 and 17, Tranquility Base, Apollo-Soyuz, Shuttle-Mir, Mir, ISS, Soyuz TM-31, Gennady Padalka, Sergei Krikalev, Valery Bykovsky, Anatoly Solovyev, Peggy Whitson, John Young, Walter Schirra, Wally Funk, Ed Dwight, STS-95, SpaceShipOne, Crew Dragon, sub-orbital vs orbital flight, EVAs, low Earth orbit and the US 50-mile space border.
Cards that Artemis II made obsolete
On April 6, 2026, the four Artemis II astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Jeremy Hansen) flew around the Moon and reached 252,756 miles (about 406,770 km) from Earth. That breaks several cards at once:
- Cards 27, 51 and 76 give Apollo 13 (400,171 km, 1970) as the farthest humans have travelled. Rewrite them as previous record holder.
- Cards 5 and 62 say no human has left low Earth orbit since 1972. True until April 2026 only.
- Card 15 says the ISS has been inhabited for over 20 years, while card 17 says over 25. Keep card 17.
Also fix a few broken fronts: card 23 reads Who was the longest solo flight? (Bykovsky, Vostok 5, almost 5 days), and card 21 asks for the first person to fly seven times but answers with two names, Young and Ross. The national totals in cards 65-67 have no date, so add the year you checked them.
Study tip: one mission, one card
Around 20 cards ask the same fact twice, once as a question and once as a mission name: cards 1/44 (Sputnik), 3/45 (Vostok 1), 13/72/73 (rendezvous), 8/69/70 (Shenzhou 5), 11/59/79 (Dragon), 16/55 (Soyuz TM-31), 25/50/77 (Apollo 10). Keep the mission-name version and suspend the others. You'll end up with about 68 cards.
Then learn the records as ladders, not as isolated facts. The time-in-space record goes Krikalev 803 days → Padalka 878 → Kononenko 1,111 (broken on February 4, 2024). The youngest and oldest cards form a 2×2 grid: sub-orbital vs orbital, youngest vs oldest (Mayers, Titov, Dwight, Glenn). Review each ladder as a single unit.
For the planets and probes this deck leaves out, see Learn the Solar System with 111 flashcards. To start, open Flip It and search for KZ2835 in the library.
Ready to learn faster? 🚀
Join FLIP IT for free and turn studying into a game.