Man-In-Space Firsts:
Radio and TV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
First live TV: Cosmonauts Konstantin Feoktistov, Vladimir Komarov and Boris Yegorovin sent down the first live TV pictures from Voskhod 1 in October 1964.

First space evangelism: Apollo 8 is remembered for a worldwide broadcast by astronauts Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders reading passages from the Holy Bible book of Genesis on Christmas Eve 1968. "Up to that point it was the largest audience that had ever listened to a human voice," Lovell recalled later.

First live color TV from space: The Apollo 10 crew used a new portable color TV camera in May 1969. The camera weighed "only" 10.5 pounds and cost $250,000 to develop.

First Earth-to-space beacon: Residents of Perth, Australia, turned on all the lights in town to signal the first American in orbit, John Glenn, as he passed overhead in 1962 in his Mercury capsule Friendship 7.

First ham chat from space: The first ham shack in space was set up in shuttle Columbia in December 1983 by astronaut Owen Garriott who used his amateur callsign W5LFL for voice contacts with amateur radio operators on the ground.

First all-ham station crew: Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov mounted an amateur radio antenna on the outer surface of Mir station in 1988. Back inside, Titov (call letters U1MIR), Manarov (U2MIR) and Valery Polyakov (U3MIR) used a two-watt amateur radio transceiver to call CQ from their 215-mi.-high ham shack and chat with hams on the ground.

First all-ham shuttle crew: It was all hams aboard Columbia in April 1990. The amateur radio operating astronauts were Kenneth Cameron (callsign KB5AWP) Jay Apt (N5QWL), Linda Godwin (N5RAX), Steven Nagel (N5RAW) and Jerry Ross (N5SCW).

---