USSR launches Sputnik 2 which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.
First Communications Satellite
The US launches Discoverer XIV, its first camera equipped spy satellite.
Alan B. Shepard becomes the first Astronaut
The U.S. sent Alan Shepard into space. He made a 15 minnute flight.
NASA announces the Gemini Program.
Mariner 2 flies past Venus and enters a solar orbit.
Cosmonaut Valentia Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
Luna 9 becomes the first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon.
Surveyor 1 soft-lands on the Moon.
Zond 5 is launched. It carried a biological payload around the Moon and returned to Earth six days later.
Soyuz 4 & 5 perform the first Soviet spacecraft docking.
Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon.
Pete Conrad and Alan Bean perform the first precision lunar landing, touching down just 600 feet from the Surveyor 3 probe that arrived two years earlier.