-
-
-
-
The U.S. Congress passes legislation establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a civilian agency responsible for coordinating America's activities in space, on July 29, 1958. ... NASA was created in response to the Soviet Union's October 4, 1957 launch of its first satellite, Sputnik I.
-
Ham (July 1957 – January 19, 1983), also known as Ham the Chimp and Ham the Astrochimp, was a chimpanzee and the first great ape launched into space. On January 31, 1961, Ham flew a suborbital flight on the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission, part of the U.S. space program's Project Mercury.
-
On April 12, 1961, Gagarin was launched into orbit by a Vostok rocket and became the first man in space. After completing one orbit, the spacecraft's automatic controls brought him safely back to Earth.
-
On this time JFK gave a speech about his commitment to get to the moon.
-
Glenn, Jr., (born July 18, 1921, Cambridge, Ohio, U.S.—died December 8, 2016, Columbus, Ohio), the first U.S. astronaut to orbit Earth, completing three orbits in 1962. (Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first person in space, had made a single orbit of Earth in 1961.) Glenn joined the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942.
-
The first EVA was performed on March 18, 1965, by Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, who spent 12 minutes and 9 seconds outside the Voskhod 2 spacecraft.
-
The first American spacewalk was performed on June 3, 1965, by Ed White from the second crewed Gemini flight, Gemini IV, for 21 minutes. White was tethered to the spacecraft, and his oxygen was supplied through a 25-foot (7.6 m) umbilical, which also carried communications and biomedical instrumentation.
-
On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.