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The Chinese were the first to use gunpowder rockets, which they called fire arrows, in military applications. In the battle of Kaifung-fu (1232 CE), for example, fire arrows helped the Chinese repel Mongol invader.
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In 1249, Arab troops used rockets in their unsuccessful attempt to thwart invading Crusader troops under Louis IX of France, during the siege of Damietta.
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From 1602 to 1609 Galileo studied the motion of pendulums and other objects as they moved along arcs and inclines. Using inclined planes that he built, he concluded that falling objects accelerate at a constant rate.
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Three laws of mechanics formulated by Sir Isaac Newton in 1687.
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In the mid-1800s, another British inventor, William Hale, invented a stickless rocket that was spin-stabilized, thus improving accuracy.
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The British used both types of military rocket effectively during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. Perhaps the most famous application of Congreve's rockets was the British bombardment of the American Fort McHenry, which occurred in the War of 1812. This rocket attack is now immortalized in the "rockets' red glare" phrase heard in "The Star-Spangled Banner."
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Starting in the mid-19th century, the French writer and technical visionary Jules Verne (1828–1905) created modern science fiction and along with it the dream of space travel. Perhaps Verne's greatest influence on the development of space travel was his 1865 novel, De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon).
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In a report Konstantin Tsiolkovsky published in 1903, Tsiolkovsky suggested the use of liquid propellants for rockets in order to achieve greater range.
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In 1912 Robert Goddard, inspired from an early age by H.G. Wells, began a serious analysis of rockets, concluding that conventional solid-fuel rockets needed to be improved in three ways.
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The German rocket engineers who developed the V-2 missile and brought advanced rocket engineering to the United States after 1945.
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January 31, 1958, with the launching of Explorer 1, the first American satellite
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The first flight of NASA's space shuttle on April 12, 1981
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United States cancels shuttle replacements X-33 and X-34 because of space cutbacks
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First launches of United States advanced Delta IV and Atlas V commercial rockets.
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Mars Exploration Rovers, 2004-Present: On January 3, 2004, the “Spirit” rover landed on Mars in Gusev crater.
