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USSR launches Sputnik 1.
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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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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is formed, it replaces the National Advisory Committee on Areonautics (NACA).
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Pioneer 1 is launched to a height of 70,700 miles.
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Luna 1 is launched by the USSR. It is the first man made object to orbit the sun.
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Tiros 1, the first successful weather satellite, is launched.
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Alan B. Shepard becomes the first American in space.
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President John F. Kennedy addresses Congress and challenge the nation to go to the Moon before the end of the decade.
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John Glenn orbits the Earth three times.
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Walter Schirra orbits the Earth six times.
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Mariner 2 flies past Venus and enters a solar orbit.
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Ranger 7 transmits the first close range images of the moon.
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Alexei Leonov spends 12 minutes outside of his Voskhod spacecraft performing the first spacewalk
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Ed White performs America's first spacewalk. Jim McDivitt remains in the Gemini capsule.
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Venus 3 is launched. It becomes the first man made object to impact Venus on March 1, 1966
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Luna 10 becomes the first satellite to orbit the moon.
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Lunar Orbiter 1 enters orbit around the moon and takes the first picture of the Earth from that distance.
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Zond 5 is launched. It carried a biological payload (including two turtles) around the moonand returned to Earth six days later.
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Neill Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin becomes the first men to walk on the moon while crewmate Michael Collins orbits around the moon alone.
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Pete Conrad and Alan Bean performs the first precision lunar landing, touching just 600 feet from the Surveyor 3 probe that arrived two years earlier.
