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John Glenn
The first American to orbit the Earth, John Glenn made history again when, at the age of 77, he became the oldest person to travel in space. But before he was nationally recognized as a hero, he had put his life on the line for his country many times -
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit -
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Russian Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space -
Alan Shepard
Alan Shepard became the first American in space. He flew on a Mercury spacecraft. There was just enough room for one person. He named his capsule Freedom 7 -
Alexei Leonov
the first spacewalk in history, beating out American rival Ed White on Gemini 4 by almost three months -
Apollo 1
tragedy struck the Apollo program when a flash fire occurred in command module 012 during a launch pad test of the Apollo/Saturn space vehicle being prepared for the first piloted flight, the AS-204 mission. -
Apollo 8
Apollo 8 was the first mission to take humans to the Moon and back. An important prelude to actually landing on the Moon was testing the flight trajectory and operations for getting there and back. -
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was the first spaceflight that landed humans on the Moon, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin -
Apollo 13
Apollo 13 was to be the third mission to land on the Moon. An explosion in one of the oxygen tanks crippled the spacecraft during flight and the crew were forced to orbit the Moon and return to the Earth without landing. -
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 was the last Apollo mission to land men on the Moon. It carried the only trained geologist to walk on the lunar surface, lunar module pilot Harrison Schmitt -
Mariner 10
was an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus -
Voyager 2
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer planets -
Columbia
when Space Shuttle Columbia, or STS-1, soared into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida -
Sally Ride
Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space when the space shuttle Challenger launched on mission STS-7 -
Challenger
when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members -
Galileo
Galileo was an unmanned spacecraft that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other Solar System bodies -
Hubble launched
The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, and remains in operation -
Dennis Tito
the world’s first orbital space tourist, is seen training for his historic 2001 flight to the International Space Station -
Columbia
when Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana as it reentered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members -
SpaceShip One
SpaceShipOne was a space plane designed and fabricated by Scaled Composites, a company owned by aerospace designer Burt Rutan -
New Horizions Launched
New Horizons spacecraft has launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida aboard a fast-moving Atlas V rocket. as it headed for a distant rendezvous with the mysterious planet Pluto almost a decade from now -
Zhai Zhigang
conducted a 22-minute space walk, the first ever for a Chinese astronaut -
International space station finished
The International Space Station is a unique place – a convergence of science, technology and human innovation that demonstrates new technologies and makes research breakthroughs not possible on Earth -
Atlantis
The space shuttle Atlantis is seen over the Bahamas prior to a perfect docking with the International Space Station -
Curiosity
Curiosity is a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale Crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission -
New Horizions reaches Pluto
The New Horizons mission is helping us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of the dwarf planet Pluto and by venturing deeper into the distant
