-
USSR launches Sputnik 1. First man made satellite.
-
USSR launches Sputnik 2, which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.
-
First American satellite to reach orbit.
-
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is formed.
-
First man made object to orbit the sun. Launched by the USSR.
-
John F. kennedy addresses congress and challenges the nation to go to the moon. Before the end of the decade.
-
Gherman Titov spends a day in space aboard the Vostok 2.
-
Mariner 2 flies past venus and enters a solar orbit.
-
Alexei Leonov spends 12 minutes outside of his Voskhod spacecraft performing the first spacewalk.
-
U.S. Mariner 4 returns the first close-range images about Mars.
-
Gemini 7 is launched carrying Frank Borman and James A. Lovell, Jr., making 206 orbits around Earth and proving a trip to the Moon possible.
-
Soviet Luna 9 is the first spacecraft to soft-land on the moon.
-
Soviet Luna 10 is the first spacecraft to orbit the moon.
-
Became first manned space craft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Earth's Moon, orbit it and return safely to Earth.
-
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first humans, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on the Moon.
-
Was the first space station of any kind, launched by the Soviet Union.
-
is a NASA space orbiter that helped in the exploration of Mars and was part of the Mariner program.
-
was the first joint U.S.–Soviet space flight, and the last flight of an Apollo spacecraft. Its primary purpose was as a symbol of the policy of détente that the two superpowers were pursuing at the time,
