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USSR launces Sputnik 1
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USSR launches Sputnik 2 which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.
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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 is launched by the USSR. It is the first man made object to orbit the Sun.
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Alan B. Shepard becomes the first American in space.
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President John F. Kennedy addresses Congress and challenges 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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L. Gordon Cooper spends 34 hours in space. He is the last American to fly in space alone.
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President JFK is assasinated.
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Alexei Leonov spends 12 minutes outside of his voskhod spacecraft performing the first space walk.
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Venus 3 is launched and becomes the first man made object to impact Venus on march 1 1966
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The crew of Apollo 7 begin a 10 day mission to study the new spacecraft.
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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 once.
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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.
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Apollo 17 returns ffrom the moon.
