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July 2000 - Air France Concorde F-BTSC suffers a tyre burst during take-off from Paris Charles de Gaulle and crashes in flames into a hotel at Gonesse, killing all 109 on board, as well as four on the ground, and injuring six other people. All Concordes in the Air France and British Airways fleets are subsequently grounded.
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Commander Bill Shepherd and Flight Engineer Sergei Krikalev dock with the International Space Station and become the first residents to live on board.
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Ending its' 3 year mission to test high risk, advanced space technologies and capture the best images ever taken of a comet.
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August 25, 2002 - NASA sets a world record for the largest balloon successfully launched, when it flew a 60 million cubic foot balloon carrying a 1,500-pound scientific payload to the fringes of space.
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December 17, 2003 - The first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company's private, non-government effort. This flight was the first powered flight of Space Ship One.
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March 3, 2004 - Steve Fossett sets an aviation world record for speed around the world solo, non-stop and non-refueled, completing the journey in a plane called Global Flyer, in 67 hours and 1 minute.
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November 10, 2005 - A Boeing 777-200LR Worldliner set a world record for the longest non-stop flight by a commercial jet. The plane flew 12,586 miles from Hong Kong to London. The plane made the trip in 22 hours and 42 minutes.
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December 15, 2006 - December 15, 2006 - Lockheed Martin officials declare the maiden flight of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter a "huge success.” The flight, which was initially scheduled for one hour, instead lands after 35 minutes because two airspeed sensors aboard the aircraft were generating conflicting data. Officials call the problem a minor glitch.
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October 2007 - The Airbus A380 enters initial commercial service with Singapore Airlines on its service between Singapore and Sydney, Australia, passengers having bought seats in an online auction. Within four years some 16 million passengers would have been carried by A380s. (By June 2012, 72 are in service).
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June 12, 2008 - Lockheed Martin makes the first F-35B short-take-off-and-vertical-landing (STOVL), in conventional-take-off (CTOL) mode, clearing the way for funding to be released for production of the first six U.S. Marine Corps aircraft.
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December 2009 - The Boeing 787 Dream liner long-range mid-size wide body twin jet, largely constructed of carbon fibre material, makes its first flight.
