-
USSR launches Sputnik 1
-
-
USSR launches Sputnik 2 which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.
-
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.
-
Explorer 2 is launced but it fails to reach orbit.
-
Sputnik 3 is launched.
-
Luna 1 is launched by the USSR. It is the first man made object to orbit the Sun.
-
Luna 2 is launched. It impacts the Moon on September 13, becoming the first man-made object to do so.
-
Luna 3 orbits the Moon and photographs 70% of its surface
-
Tiros 1, the first successful weather satellite, is launched
-
Yuri Gagarin orbits the Earth once and becomes the first man in space
-
Alan B. Shepard becomes the first American in space
-
President Kennedy gives a speech at Rice University reaffirming the importance of the Moon program.
-
Mariner 2 flies past Venus and enters a solar orbit.
-
Cosmonaut Valentia Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
-
L. Gordon Cooper spends 34 hours in space. He is the last American to fly in space alone
-
Ranger 7 transmits the first close range images of the Moon.
-
Venus 3 is launched. It becomes the first man made object to impact Venus on March 1, 1966
-
Walter Schirra and Thomas Stafford, in their Gemini 6 spacecraft, make the first space rendezvous with Gemini 7
-
Luna 9 becomes the first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon
-
Luna 10 becomes the first satellite to orbit the Moon.
-
Gemini 12, the last flight of the Gemini Program, launches with James Lovell and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin aboard.
-
Venera 4 transmits data about the atmosphere of Venus.
-
Zond 5 is launched. It carried a biological payload (including two turtles) around the Moon and returned to Earth six days later.
-
The crew of Apollo 7 begin a 10 day mission to study the new spacecraft.
-
Soyuz 4 & 5 perform the first Soviet spacecraft docking
-
Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin become the first men to walk on the Moon while crewmate Michael Collins orbits around the Moon alone.
-
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.
