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First Satellite Lunched
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm (23 in) diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennae to broadcast radio pulses. It was visible all around the Earth and its radio pulses were detectable. -
First Human in Space
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Russian Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961 -
First American in Space
On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American in space. He flew on a Mercury spacecraft. There was just enough room for one person. He named his capsule Freedom 7. -
Apollo 11
The primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth. -
First Man to Circle the Earth
On February 20, 1962, NASA launched one of the most important flights in American history. The mission? Send a man to orbit Earth, observe his reactions and return him home safely. The pilot of this historic flight, John Glenn, became a national hero and a symbol of American ambition. -
First Spacewalk
A cosmonaut remembers the exhilaration-and terror-of his first space mission. In March 1965, at the age of 30, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk in history, beating out American rival Ed White on Gemini 4 by almost three months -
Apollo 1
Tragedy struck on the launch pad at Cape Kennedy during a preflight test for Apollo 204. The mission was to be the first crewed flight of Apollo, and was scheduled to launch Feb. 21, 1967. Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee lost their lives when a fire swept through the command module, or CM -
Apollo 8
Apollo 8, the second human spaceflight mission in the United States Apollo space program, was launched on December 21, 1968, and became the first manned spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Earth's Moon, orbit it and return safely to Earth. -
Apollo 13
The craft was launched on April 11, 1970 from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida, but the lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded two days later, crippling the Service Module upon which the Command Module depended. Despite great hardship caused by limited power, loss of cabin heat, shortage of potable water, and the critical need to jury-rig the carbon dioxide removal system, the crew returned safely to Earth on April 17. -
Apollo 17
Apollo 17 was the final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the enterprise that landed the first humans on the Moon. Launched at 12:33 am Eastern Standard Time on December 7, 1972 -
Mariner 10 Launched
Mariner 10 was an American robotic space probe launched by NASA on November 3, 1973, to fly by the planets Mercury and Venus. Mariner 10 was launched approximately two years after Mariner 9 and was the last spacecraft in the Mariner program. -
Voyager 2 Launched
Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977 to study the outer planets. -
First Reusable Space Shuttle Launch
The first mission of the space transport system (STS-1) or Space Shuttle, flew on April 12, 1981 -
First Space Shuttle Launch
The first launch of the Space Shuttle occurred on 12 April 1981, exactly 20 years after the first manned space flight, when the orbiter Columbia, with two crew members, astronauts John W. Young, commander, and Robert L. Crippen, pilot, lifted off from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, at the Kennedy Space Center. -
First American Woman in Space
On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space when the space shuttle Challenger launched on mission -
Challenger Disaster
The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster occurred on January 28, 1986, when the NASA Space Shuttle orbiter Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, leading to the deaths of its seven crew members, which included five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists. The spacecraft disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida at 11:39 -
Galileo Launched
Galileo was an unmanned spacecraft that studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other Solar System bodies. -
Hubble Launched
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990, and remains in operation. -
ISS Cunstruction Begins
The process of assembling the International Space Station (ISS) has been under way since the 1990s. Zarya, the first ISS module, was launched by a Proton rocket on 20 November 1998. -
First Tourist in Space
American businessman Dennis Tito, the world's first orbital space tourist, is seen training for his historic 2001 flight to the International Space Station. Tito launched in April 2001 aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft thanks to a $20 million deal brokered by the Virginia-based firm Space Adventures. -
Columbia Disaster
The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster occurred on February 1, 2003, when Columbia disintegrated over Texas and Louisiana as it reentered Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. -
First Launch of Space Ship One
The SpaceShipOne is a suborbital air-launched spaceplane that completed the first manned private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the US$10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service. -
New Horizons Launched
On January 19, 2006, New Horizons was launched from Cape Canaveral directly into an Earth-and-solar escape trajectory with a speed of about 16.26 kilometers per second (58,536 km/h; 36,373 mph). After a brief encounter with asteroid 132524 APL, New Horizons proceeded to Jupiter, making its closest approach on February 28, 2007, at a distance of 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) -
First Chinese Space Walk
China's first spacewalk on 27 September, Zhai Zhigang, wearing a Chinese-developed Feitian space suit, conducted a 22-minute space walk, the first ever for a Chinese astronaut -
Last Space Shuttle Launch
STS-135 was the 135th and final mission of the American Space Shuttle program. It used the orbiter Atlantis and hardware originally processed for the STS-335 contingency mission, which was not flown. STS-135 launched on 8 July 2011, and landed on 21 July 2011, following a one-day mission extension. The four-person crew was the smallest of any shuttle mission since STS-6 in April 1983. -
Curiosity Mars Landing
Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, at 15:02 UTC aboard the MSL spacecraft and landed on Aeolis Palus in Gale Crater on Mars on August 6, 2012, 05:17 UTC. -
New Horizons Reaches Pluto
On January 15, 2015, the New Horizons spacecraft began its approach phase to Pluto. On July 14, 2015, at 11:49 UTC, it flew 12,500 km (7,800 mi) above the surface of Pluto, making it the first spacecraft to explore the dwarf planet.