Which 2 astronauts were the first to return to earth from space and what was special about them?
The first rocket to make it into space was the V-2, in 1942. After the war, Von Braun came to America and worked with the US space program. The Redstone rocket was the first to put a payload into orbit, (Explorer 1), in 1958, the year after the Soviets put Sputnik into orbit. The rocket was a version of Redstone called Jupiter C. The first astronaut was a cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, from the Soviet Union. If you are talking about Americans, the first two were Alan Shepard and Virgil (Gus) Grissom. They were both pilots with extensive experience. They were both military, Shepard in the Navy and Grissom in the Air Force. Yes, the first American into space was a Navy pilot. They were chosen as two of the seven original astronauts in the Mercury program. Both of them went as far as the Apollo program. Shepard went to the moon. Their flights just went up into space and came back down. The third Mercury mission was John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the earth. Grissom died in a tra
