| August 19, 1960 - The Soviet Uion launches Sputnik 5, the test vehicle for the new Vostok spacecraft that will carry cosmonauts into space. It carries two dogs that become the first living creatures to successfuly return from orbital flight. |
| April 12, 1961 - Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to orbit the Earth inside the Vostok 1 spacecraft. |
| May 5, 1961 - NASA sends astronaut Alan Shepard, Jr., in a Mercury capsule on a suborbital flight. |
| May 25, 1961 - President John F. Kennedy commits the United states to landing a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. |
| February 20, 1962 - John Glenn, Jr., becomes the first American to orbit Earth. |
| March 18, 1965 - The Soviet Union launches the Voskhod 2 spacecraft, carrying two cosmonauts. During their orbit one of the cosmonauts, Aleksei Leonov, becoms the first human to leave an orbiting spacecraft. |
| March 16, 1966 - NASA launches the Gemini 8 mission, which accomplishes the first successful rendevous and docking operation between a crewwed spacecraft and an uncrewed target vehicle. |
| September 12, 1966 - NASA launches the highly productive Gemini 11 mission. It quickly achieved its primary goal of docking with the Agena traget vehicle. Then the crew used the Agena's restartable rocket engines to propel the crafts (in the docked configuration) to a record setting altitude of 1,370 kilometers, the highest ever flown by a human-crewed, orbiting spacecraft. To further demonstrate emerging space technology, the reentry of Gemini 11 is completely computer controlled.
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| Jaunary 27, 1967 - Astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee die when a flash fire sweeps through the capsule. NASA delays the Moon-landing program for 18 months, while the Apollo spacecraft recieves major design and safety changes, |
| December 21, 1968 - NASA launches the Apollo 8 spacecraft. The three crew members are the first people to leave Earth's gravitational influence. |
| May 18, 1969 - In a full dress rehearsal for the first Moon landing, the Apollo 10 crew successfully demonstrates the complete Apollo mission checklist. |
| July 16, 1969 - Apollo 11 lifts off, and four days later on July 20, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to set foot on the Moon. Click here to see a picture of the luanr lander msking its descent to the lunar surface. |
| April 19, 1971 - The Soviet union launches the world's first space sattion, Salyut 1. |
| July 26, 1971 - NASA launches the Apollo 15 mission to the Moon. It was the first mission to employ the popular Lunar Rover Vehicle. |
| January 5, 1972 - President Richard Nixon approves the space shuttle mission |
| December 7, 1972 - NASA launches Apollo 17, the last expedition to the Moon in the twentieth century. |
| May 14, 1973 - NASA launches Skylab, the first American space station. Click here for a picture of Skylab orbiting Earth. |
| September 29, 1977 - The Soviet Union launches the Salyut 6 space station, which contains several important design improvements. With this new second-generation space station, the Soviet space program evolves from short-duration to long-duration stays in space. |
| April 12, 1981 - NASA inagurates the era of reusable space transportation with the launch of the space shuttle Columbia. At the end of its successful two day test mission, Columbia becomes the first spacecraft to return to Earth by gliding through the atmosphere, and landing like an airplane. It also achieved another first for NASA, it was the first use of solid fuel rockets in a crewed mission. Click here for a picture of ths space shuttle on its landing approach. |
| November 11, 1982 - NASA launches Columbia on its first true operational flight. During the mission, the crew deploys two comercial communication satelittes. |
| April 4, 1983 - NASA launches the space shuttle Challenger. During this mission, astronauts preform the first extravehicular activity from the space shuttle. |
| Spring, 1985 - The European Space Authority, Japan, and the United States all sign agreements for participation in the development of an International Space Station. |
| January 28, 1986 - The space shuttle Challenger explodes during ascent, killing the crew. One of the seven crew members is Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher participating as a part of NASA's Teacher in Space program. She was scheduled to teach a lesson from orbit, that was to be broadcast into all of America's public schools. |
| February 20, 1986 - The Soviet Union introduces its third-generation space station, a sophisticated facility called Mir (peace). Click here to see a picture of Mir. |
| September 29, 1988 - NASA successfully launches the space shuttle Discovery. The four day mission marks NASA's return to human spaceflight after a 32 month suspension following the Challenger disaster. |
| April 24, 1990 - The space shuttle Discovery successfully deploys the Hubble Space Telescope. |
| February 3, 1994 - NASA launches the space shuttle Discovery. The six person crew includes cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian to leave Earth on an American shuttle. His presence on the mission signifies the begining of a new era of cooperation in space between the United States and Russia. |
| June 27, 1995 - NASA launches the space shuttle Atlantis. This mission is the 100th U.S. human spaceflight. During this mission Atlantis becomes the first American spacecraft to dock with Mir. |
| December 4, 1998 - NASA launches the shuttle Endevour on the first assembly mission of the International Space Station. Click here to see a picture of the International Space Station. |
| May 27, 1999 - NASA launches the shuttle Discovery to accomplish the first docking with the International Space Station. |
| March 23, 2001 - Russian mission controllers safely deorbit the Mir space station. Any pieces of the derilict station that survived atmospheric reentry fall without incident in a remote region of the South Pacific Ocean. |
| February 1, 2003 - Gliding back to Earth after a successful 16-day research mission in low Earth orbit, the space shuttle Columbia experienced a catastrophic accident at an altitude of about 63 kilometers over Texas. Traveling at approximately 18 times the speed of sound, the orbiter disintegrated, taking the lives of all seven crew members: six American astronauts, and the first Israeli astronaut. Disaster struck Columbia when she was only fifteen minutes from its landing site at Kenedy Space Center in Florida. |
This page lists by date most of the important manned space missions. It will focus mainly on American achevments, but some of the more remarkable Soviet achievments are also listed.
