-
First telescopic observation of the night sky: Discovery of Jupiter's moons, lunar craters and the phases of Venus.
-
First clear telescopic photograph of another world: The Moon.
-
First animals in space
-
The Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into space.
-
Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
-
Cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov was killed in a crash when the parachute on his Soyuz 1 spacecraft failed to deploy.
-
Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men on the moon.
-
Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space.
-
John Glenn became the oldest man in space.
-
The Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
-
President Bush proposed a new space program that would send humans back to the moon by 2015 and establish a base to Mars and beyond.
-
NASA spacecraft Stardust returned safely to Earth in a desert near Salt Lake City with the first dust ever collected from a comet.
-
The NASA space probe Messenger skimmed 124 miles above Mercury.
-
NASA's Dawn spacecraft became the first man made craft to orbit an asteroid.
