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The USSR starts what is now known as the Space Race. They launched a artificial Earth Satellite. It had four external antennas to broadcast radio signal.
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Explorer 1, the first American satellite to reach orbit, is launched. It carried scientific equipment that lead to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt.
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Luna 1, also known as Mechta, E-1 No.4 and First Cosmic Ship (Launched by the USSR) , was the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon, and the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric orbit.
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Luna 2 is launched by the USSR. It impacts the Moon on September 13, becoming the first man-made object to do so. It was also the first spacecraft to impact another celestial body.
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April 12 was,already a huge day in space history twenty years before the launch of the first shuttle mission. On that day in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, making a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft. Newspapers like
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On May 5, 1961, Mercury Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. blasted off in his Freedom 7 capsule atop a Mercury-Redstone rocket . His 15-minute sub-orbital flight made him the first American in space.
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John Glenn traveled about 81,000 miles in 4 hours 56 minutes before splashing into the Atlantic at 2:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.
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Alexei Leonov spends 12 minutes outside of his Voskhod spacecraft performing the first spacewalk. He is a USSR astronaut.
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Luna 10 was the first spacecraft to go into orbit around the Moon, and the first human-made object to orbit any body beyond the Earth. (Launched by the U.S.)
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Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon while crewmate Michael Collins orbits around the Moon alone.
