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October 4 - The Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik, into space.
November 3 - The Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 was launched with a dog named Laika on board. Laika did not survive the voyage.
January 31 - Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into orbit on January 31, 1958. It was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the California Institute of Technology. The satellite was sent aloft from Cape Canaveral in Florida by the Jupiter C rocket that was designed, built, and launched by the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) under the direction of Dr. Wernher Von Braun.
August 19 - The Soviet craft Sputnik 5 was launched, carrying the dogs Strelka and Belka. They became the first living beings to survive a trip into space.
April 12 - Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.
May 5 - Astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space.
May 25 - President Kennedy challenged the country to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
February 20 - Astronaut John Glenn became the first American in orbit.
June 16 - Valentina Nikolayeva Tereshkova became the first woman in space.
March 18 - While tethered to his spacecraft, cosmonaut Alexi Leonov became the first man to walk in space.
June 3 - Astronaut Ed White became the first American to walk in space.
July 14 - The spacecraft Mariner 4 transmitted the first pictures of Mars.
February 3 - The Russian spacecraft Luna 9 became the first spacecraft to land on the moon.
June 2 - Surveyor 1 became the first American spacecraft to land on the moon.
January 27 - Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in an accidental fire in a command module on the launch pad.
April 24 - Cosmonaut Vladimir M. Komarov was killed in a crash when the parachute on his Soyuz 1 spacecraft failed to deploy.
October 18 - A descent capsule from the Soviet probe Venera 4 collected data about the atmosphere of Venus.
September 15 - The Soviet spacecraft Zond 5 was launched and later became the first spacecraft to orbit the moon and return to Earth.
December 21 - Apollo 8 was launched, and later her crewmembers became the first men to orbit the moon.
July 20 - Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men on the moon.
April 11 - Apollo 13 was launched.
September 12 - The Soviet craft Luna 16 was launched and became the first automatic spacecraft to return soil samples of the moon.
November 17 - The Soviet automatic robot Lunokhod 1 landed on the moon with Luna 17.
December 15 - The Soviet Venera 7 became the first probe to land on Venus.
April 19 - The Soviet space station Salyut 1 was launched.
July 30 - The moon rover was driven on the moon for the first time.
November 13 - The Mariner 9 probe became the first craft to orbit another world - Mars.
December 11 - Eugene Cernan and Harrison "Jack" Schmitt became the last men to walk on the moon.
May 14 - The U.S. launched its first space station, Skylab.
July 17 - The American Apollo 18 and Soviet Soyuz 19 dock in the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.
September - The American probe Viking 2 discovered water frost on the Martian surface.
August and September - Voyagers 1 and 2 were launched. (Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1, but Voyager 1 was on a faster trajectory.)
March and August - Voyagers 1 and 2 began transmitting images of Jupiter and her moons.
September - The U.S. probe Pioneer 11 reached Saturn and began transmitting images.
November 13 - Voyager 1 reached Saturn and began transmitting images.
April 12 - Columbia became the first Space Shuttle to be launched.
August 26 - Voyager 2 reached Saturn and began transmitting images.
April 4 - The second Space Shuttle, Challenger, was launched.
June 19 - Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on Challenger’s second mission.
August 30 - Guion Bluford became the first African-American in space.
February 3 - Astronaut Bruce McCandless became the first man to take an untethered space walk.
August 30 - The third Space Shuttle, Discovery, was launched.
October - Kathryn Sullivan became the first American woman to walk in space.
October 3 - Atlantis, the fourth Space Shuttle, was launched.
January 24 - Voyager 2 began transmitting images from Uranus.
January 28 - The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded seconds after liftoff.
February 20 - The core section of the Space Station Mir was launched.
August - Voyager 2 began transmitting images from Neptune.
August 10 - The Magellan spacecraft began mapping the surface of Venus using radar equipment.
August 24 - The Space Shuttle Discovery deployed the Hubble Space Telescope.
May 7 - The Space Shuttle Endeavor was launched on her maiden voyage.
September 12 - Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman in space.
December - The Space Shuttle Endeavor made the first servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope.
February 3 - Sergei Krikalev became the first Russian cosmonaut to fly on a Space Shuttle.
February 2 - Eileen Collins became the first female Shuttle pilot.
December - The Galileo probe began transmitting data on Jupiter.
July 4 - The Mars Pathfinder arrived on Mars and later began transmitting images.
October 29 - John Glenn became the oldest man in space.
July 23 - Eileen Collins became the first female Shuttle Commander.
February 14 - The U.S. Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft began transmitting images of the asteroid Eros.
February 12 - NEAR landed on the surface of Eros.
April 28 - American Dennis Tito became the first tourist in space after paying the Russian space program $20,000,000.
February 1 - The Space Shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
February 13 - An investigative panel found that superheated air almost certainly seeped through a breach in space shuttle Columbia’s left wing and possibly its wheel compartment during the craft’s fiery descent, resulting in the deaths of all seven astronauts.
August 25 - NASA launched the largest-diameter infrared telescope ever in space, the Spitzer Space Telescope.
September 21 - NASA’s Galileo mission ended a 14-year exploration of the solar system’s largest planet and its moons with the spacecraft crashing by design into Jupiter at 108,000 mph.
January 14 - President Bush proposed a new space program that would send humans back to the moon by 2015 and establish a base to Mars and beyond.
July 1 - The Cassini spacecraft sent back photographs of Saturn’s shimmering rings.
July 3 - A NASA spacecraft collided with a comet half the size of Manhattan, creating a brilliant cosmic smashup designed to help scientists study the building blocks of life on earth.
July 26 - Space Shuttle Discovery was launched with seven astronauts aboard; this was America’s first manned space shot since the 2003 Columbia disaster.
January 15 - NASA spacecraft Stardust returned safely to Earth in a desert near Salt Lake City with the first dust ever collected from a comet.
August 4 - NASA launched its Phoenix Mars Lander.
August 8 - Space Shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted off with teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan aboard as a crewmember. Morgan was the first teacher in space since the Challenger disaster in 1986.
January 14 - The NASA space probe Messenger skimmed 124 miles above Mercury.
May 25 - NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander landed safely and began sending images home after a 10-month, 422 million-mile journey. Scientists later reported that Phoenix discovered chunks of ice.
March 6 - The NASA spacecraft Kepler was launched. Its mission is to search for planets outside our solar system, in a distant area of the Milky Way.
June 18 - NASA launched the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, also known as LCROSS. The mission is to confirm the presence or absence of ice on the moon. On November 13, 2009, NASA scientists announced the discovery of a "significant amount" of ice in a crater near the moon’s South Pole.
October 10 - Virgin Galactic, a private company, announced the successful first manned glide flight of the VSS Enterprise. This vehicle is a suborbital plane designed to take private citizens on suborbital space flights.
October 11 - President Barack Obama signed legislation focusing NASA’s efforts on exploring Mars and the asteroids.
December 8 - A private company named SpaceX launched a spacecraft into orbit and returned it to earth safely. It was the first non-government organization to accomplish this.
July 8 - The space shuttle Atlantis became the last American space shuttle to be launched into space. Mission STS-135 and its 4-member crew brought much-needed supplies and equipment to the International Space Station (ISS).
July 16 - NASA's Dawn spacecraft became the first man made craft to orbit an asteroid.
November 26 - NASA launched Curiosity, the biggest, best equipped robot ever sent to explore another planet. It will reach Mars in 2012.
May 22 - SpaceX, a commercial space company, launched its Dragon C2+ mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS).
August - NASAâ€™s Voyager 1 probe, launched in 1977, entered interstellar space.
August 6 - NASA's Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars. As large as a car, it carried an array of advanced new instruments and experiments.
September 7 - NASA launched the unmanned LADEE spacecraft from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. It was the U.S. space agency's third lunar probe in five years.
December 24 - NASA astronauts wrapped up successful repairs at the International Space Station after a rare Christmas Eve spacewalk to fix an equipment cooling system.

This timeline is mainly compiled from the NASA Space Exploration Timeline: 1957 A.D.-Present , Sea and Sky’s Space Exploration Timeline and Timeline of NASA, the Space Shuttle and Near Earth Space Flights .

Looking Back on 50 Years of Spaceflight

The worldtook a giant leap forward on Oct. 4, 1957, when a silver sphere the size of abasketball launched into space atop a Soviet Union rocket.

Sputnik 1, asmall beeping ball with four long antennas, became the first artificialsatellite to orbit, ushering in the Space Age and launching a race to the moonbetween the former Soviet Union and the U.S.

In honor ofthe 50 th anniversary of Sputnik's launch, SPACE.com presents acollection of stories and features that look back on five decades of human spaceflightand what the future may hold.

TIMELINE:50 Years of Spaceflight

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Timeline of space exploration

From the moment Sputnik I was a success, dreams that humans would one day walk on the Moon – or even other planets – has become more of a reality with each passing milestone. We look back at the history of space exploration.

Here is a timeline of space exploration

4 October Sputnik 1 becomes the first human-made object to orbit the Earth and triggers the frenetic ‘space race’ between the Soviet Union and the USA.

3 November Sputnik 2 carries the dog Laika, who becomes the first living animal to travel into space. (She dies within seven hours of launch.)

31 January Explorer 1 lifts off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, to become the first US artificial Earth satellite. NASA is founded in October of this year.

2 January The first human-made object to fly near the Moon, Luna 1 passes within 5995 km of Earth’s cratered satellite and eventually orbits the Sun, between the orbits of Earth and Mars.

13 September Luna 2 , carrying Soviet pennants, becomes the first human-made object to “impact” on the Moon. It confirms the finding by Luna 1 that the Moon has no magnetic field.

12 April Cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin becomes the first man to enter space. Three press releases are prepared one for success, two for failure. Gargarin makes one complete orbit of Earth and returns safely.

5 May Astronaut Alan Shepard becomes the first American man in space, in a suborbital Project Mercury flight aboard Freedom 7 . Later that month, US President John F. Kennedy challenges his nation to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

May 25 President Kennedy declares the US space objective to put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.

February 20 John Glenn becomes first American to orbit Earth, completing three orbits.

June 16-19 Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, completes 48 orbits.

March 18 Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov takes man’s first space walk.

January 27 Astronauts Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee die when a fire sweeps the Apollo I command module during a ground test at Kennedy Space Centre.

April 24 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his Soyuz I spacecraft crashes on return to Earth.

December 21 First manned spacecraft to orbit moon, Apollo 8, comes within 112km of lunar surface.

July 20, 1969 Man walks on the moon. Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin of Apollo 11 spend 21.5 hours on the moon, 2.5 of those outside the capsule.

June 29 Three cosmonauts, Georgy Dobrovolsky, Vladislav Volkov and Viktor Patsayev, die during re-entry of their Soyuz 11 spacecraft. A government commission disclosed that the three died 30 minutes before landing because a faulty valve depressurised the spacecraft.

December 7-19 Apollo 17 mission that includes the longest and last stay of man on the moon 74 hours, 59 minutes by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

May 14 Skylab I , the first US orbiting laboratory, launches.

July 17-19 US astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts participate in Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, docking together in space for two days.

April 12 Shuttle Columbia becomes first winged spaceship to orbit Earth and return to airport landing.

June 18 Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space.

February 7 Astronaut Bruce McCandless performs man’s first untethered spacewalk with a Manned Manoeuvreing Unit off the Challenger space shuttle.

January 28 Challenger shuttle explodes 73 seconds after launch, killing its crew of seven.

November 15 Soviets launch their first space shuttle. The 3-hour, 20-minute flight of the shuttle Buran is unmanned.

December 21 Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov return to Earth from Soviet space station Mir after man’s longest space flight 365 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes.

March 14 Norman Thagard becomes first American to be launched on a Russian rocket. Two days later, he becomes first American to visit the Russian space station Mir

June 29 Atlantis docks with Mir in first shuttle-station hook-up.

September 26 Shannon Lucid returns to Earth after 188-day Mir mission, a US space endurance record and a world record for women.

October 29 John Glenn, now 77, returns to space aboard shuttle Discovery , becoming the oldest person ever to fly in space.

May 29 Discovery becomes first shuttle to dock with the international space station, a multinational, permanent, orbiting research laboratory.

November 2 An American and Russian crew begins living aboard the International Space Station.

February 1 Shuttle Columbia breaks apart over Texas, 16 minutes before it was supposed to land in Florida.

July 21 Final space shuttle mission ends when Atlantis arrives at Kennedy Space Centre.

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Timeline: Humans in space

Much of the history of manned space travel was a story of two superpowers battling it out for the big prizes, while the Europeans made up the numbers. Lately, things have been changing: while the US still dominates, China and Europe have been making increasingly confident strides away from the surface of the Earth. We trace the history of space travel, from the early days of animals on rockets to the planned International Space Centre.

1947: Fruit flies become the first creatures in space, getting a ride on a UK-launched V2 rocket.

1949: Albert II, a rhesus monkey, is sent into space on a US-launched V2 rocket. He died on impact after a parachute failure.

1951: On September 20, a monkey named Yorick and 11 mice are recovered after an Aerobee missile flight of 72,000 metres at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. Yorick got a fair amount of press as the first monkey to live through a space flight.

1955: The UK starts developing its Blue Streak intermediate range ballistic missile. It was later cancelled as a weapons system but then incorporated within the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) as the first stage of the Europa satellite launch vehicle.

1957: Sputnik 1 orbit the Earth.

1957: Laika became the first dog to be launched into orbit aboard Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika died during the flight.

1958: Pierre Auger from France and Edoardo Amaldi from Italy, two prominent members of the European scientific community, recommend that European governments set up a ‘purely scientific’ joint organisation for space research, taking CERN as a model.

1958: A Jupiter rocket is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a South American squirrel monkey named Gordo onboard. The nosecone recovery parachute failed to operate and Gordo died. Telemetry data sent back during the flight showed that the monkey survived 10G at launch, eight minutes of weightlessness and 40G at re-entry speeds of 10,000 miles per hour.

1959: On board another Jupiter rocket, Able and Baker become the first monkeys to survive spaceflight. Able dies four days after the flight from a reaction to anesthesia while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode, while Baker lived until 1984. Later that year, the duo was followed by a rhesus monkey called Sam, who also survived his journey.

1959: First glimpse of the far side of the moon thanks to the Soviet satellite Lunik III.

1960: British radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire makes contact with the American Pioneer V satellite at a distance of 407,000 miles, setting a new record.

1960: On August 19, Sputnik takes off with Belka and Strelka, two dogs, and becomes the first spacecraft to carry mammals into orbit and return them alive. One of Strelka's pups, Pushinka, bred and born after her mission, was given as a present to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khruschev in 1961.

1961: In January, Ham the Chimp was launched in the US Mercury capsule aboard a Redstone rocket. He travels 155 miles in 16.5 minutes. At the end of that year, Enos the chimp became the first primate in orbit, circling the earth twice.

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1961: In April, Yuri Gagarin orbits the Earth for nearly two hours making the Soviet Union the first nation to put a man into space. A month later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a sub-orbital flight lasting 15 minutes.

1961: In May, John F Kennedy announced: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."

1961: A Russian, Major Gherman Titov, becomes the first astronaut to spend a day in space, returning to Earth safely after 25 hours in space.

1962: John Glenn becomes the first American astronaut to orbit Earth. In 1998, Glenn became the oldest man in space at the age of 77.

1962: The first US rocket, the Ranger IV, lands on the Moon but, due to a technical fault, fails to send back any images.

1962: The US Mariner 2 took the first images of the atmosphere of Venus.

1962: A US Thor-Delta vehicle launched Ariel (UK) 1, the first spacecraft to contain British technology and the world’s first international satellite.

1963: Russian Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman cosmonaut.

1964: European countries form two agencies, one to develop a launch system, the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO) and the other, the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), to develop spacecraft.

1965: The Gemini V returns to Earth safely, bringing US atronauts Charles Conrad and Gordon Cooper home. The pair had spent eight days orbiting the earth – three days longer than previous missions.

1966: The US had managed to crash probes into the Moon, but in February the Russians successfully landed the Luna 9 probe, which then immediately started taking images of its surroundings. The Americans followed in June with the Surveyor 1.

1966: Three US astronauts die in the Apollo 1 disaster in a test run for the launch.

1967: Russian Colonel Vladimir Komarov, becomes the first cosmonaut to die in a space crash when the strings of his craft’s parachute became tangled.

1967: The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is set up in Darmstadt, Germany. It has now operated more than 50 satellites in 40 years of history.

1967: In October, the Russian Venera 4 probe penetrates the atmosphere of Venus and then disappears. Days later, the US Mariner 5 successfully flew past the planet and managed to record data revealing the planet to be what Nasa scientists called "a hell-hole".

1968: On Christmas Eve, the crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft safely orbit the moon.

1968: The Soviet Union sends the first tortoise into space.

1969: In May, two US astronauts on board the Apollo 10 spacecraft came within nine miles of the Moon's surface.

1969: On July 21, Neil Armstrong makes his “giant leap for mankind”, becoming the first person to set foot on the Moon.

1969: In November, a second US crew landed on the Moon. Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad and Lieutenant-Commander Alan Bean spent seven-and-a-half hours on the surface.

1970: The infamous Apollo 13 mission, whih launched on April 14, suffered an explosion 56 hours after lift-off. Despite mounting odds, the three astronauts landed safely back on Earth on April 17.

1970: In September, an unmanned Russian probe, Luna 16, returned to earth with a sample of lunar rock.

1971: US astronaut Alan Shepard of Apollo 14 became the first man to play golf on the moon, using a ball and golf club he smuggled inside his space suit.

1971: In June, a Russian crew who had spent a record 24 days in space were found dead in their capsule after landing in Kazakhstan.

1971: In November, the US Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars.

1972: In December, Nasa launched its final mission to the Moon, Apollo 17.

1973: ESRO and Nasa agree to build Spacelab, a modular science package for use on Space Shuttle flights. Construction starts in 1974 and the first module is given to Nasa in exchange for flight opportunities for European astronauts. Spacelab was used on 25 shuttle flights between 1983 and 1998.

1974: Three US astronauts break records by spending 85 days in the American space station, Skylab, which orbits the Earth at a height of 270 miles. Skylab was abandoned and fell to Earth on 11 July 1979.

1975: The European Space Agency (ESA) was established as a collaboration between 18 European states. Headquartered in Paris, ESA now has a staff of nearly 2,000 and an budget of about €3.6 billion for 2009.

1976: In July, the Earth receives the first photographs of the surface of Mars thanks to the US Viking I spacecraft.

1979: The European Space Agency launches its first rocket, the Ariane 1, on Christmas Eve. It is followed in July 1980, by two larger rockets, the Ariane 2 and 3.

1980: The US Voyager 2 reached Saturn and beamed back the first images of the planet, which is 950 million miles from Earth.

1983: The US puts the first woman in space: Sally Ride, a 32-year-old former tennis champion.

1984: The UK’s Skynet 4A defence communications satellite is launched from a Nasa space shuttle. Its successor, Skynet 4B, was supposed to be accompanied by Nigel Woods, who would have become the UK’s first astronaut, but was cancelled because of the Challenger disaster, after which Nasa vowed not to take any more “passengers” aboard its shuttles.

1986: Giotto, ESA’s first deep-space mission, studies two commets: Halley and Grigg-Skejllerup.

1986: Seven astronauts die January 28, when the Challenger space shuttle broke up 73 seconds into its flight.

1986: A month later, the Russians launch the world’s biggest space station, Mir. This was almost continuously occupied until November 2000, including a 439-day stay by Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov.

1987: The US launches the Discovery space shuttle with a five-man crew with the mission of launching a new communications satellite.

1989: In August, the US launches the unmanned Voyager 2 spacecraft, which sent back the first close-up images of Neptune and its satellite planets.

1990: The Discovery space shuttle launches on April 24 with the Hubble space telescope. The telescope is put into orbit 380 miles above the Earth, but when it sent its first images back in May, they were blurred. This prompts one of the most ambitious space missions ever, when astronauts are sent into space to repair it.

1990: In August, the Magellan spacecraft finishes a 15-month journey to Venus.

1991: Helen Sharman, from Sheffield, becomes the first Briton in space, on board the Soviet Soyuz TM-12 space capsule. She was selected from 13,000 applicants.

1995: The era of collaboration between Russia and the US begins in June, when two cosmonauts were delivered to the Mir space station by a US space shuttle.

1995: In April, the Global Positioning System (GPS) developed by the US Department of Defence goes live. It uses between 24 and 32 medium Earth orbit satellites and its official name is NAVSTAR GPS.

1995: The European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission is launched on December 12 with the Atlas 2-AS rocket. Its continuing mission is to “investigate the physical processes that form and heat the Sun's corona, maintain it and give rise to the expanding solar wind, and the interior structure of the Sun”

1997: In July, a rover called Sojourner is allowed to start its exploration of Mars. It covers 42,000 square metres of territory and is sent back 550 images of the Martian surface.

1998: Construction begins in space of the International Space Centre. It is due to be completed by 2011.

2001: A Californian man becomes the first space tourist. Dennis Tito, 60, had initially approached Nasa but, when he was refused a place on a space shuttle, opted to travel instead with a Russian crew. He spent eight days on board the International Space Station.

2003: In July, the US Columbia shuttle disintegrates as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.

2003: China became the third country to send a man into space when it launched the Shenzhou V rocket from the Gobi desert. The astronaut, Yang Liwei, safely returns to Earth 21 hours later.

2003: On Christmas Day, the British-built Mars probe, Beagle 2, disappears. It was supposed to land on the planet’s surface at 0245 GMT but is never heard from again. Just days later, Nasa landed the Spirit rover on Mars and it sent back images of the planet’s surface.

2005: The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon, Titan, on 14 January. It continues to send data for 90 minutes.

2007: The European Union approves financing for the launch of 30 satellites to form Galileo, its own version of GPS. This is projected to be fully operational by 2013.

2008: ESA's Columbus laboratory is launched on Space Shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station (ISS).

2009: The Herschel space observatory and the probe Planck launched. Planck is Europe's first mission to study the relic radiation from the Big Bang. Also this year, ESA astronaut Frank De Winne became the first European commander of an ISS expedition. And ESA has selected new astronauts, for the first time since 1992: there are two Italian, one French, one Dane, one German and one Briton, Timothy Peake. The new recruits will join the European Astronaut Corps and start their training to prepare for future missions to the International Space Station, and beyond.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK

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Space exploration as it was imagined in the '50s

By Nathan Ingraham

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Back in the 1950s, when the allure of space travel captured the imagination of a nation, Collier's magazine fed that desire with a series of articles that outlined in detail how the US would explore the reaches of space. While the scenarios detailed in the magazine over the span of two years didn't come true, it wasn't for lack of talent: Collier's editor Gordon Manning put together a dream team of scientists and artist to bring their vision to readers, a vision that included a 50-man moon expedition by 1964 and a manned mission to Mars not long after.

io9 has a great look at the endeavor , with plenty of detail on each step of the scenario dreamed up by Manning's team — and just as importantly, a wide variety of the original illustrations are included as well. The circular space station, in all its 2001 glory, is a particularly impressive piece of art. Of course, to built the massive structure would have required an estimated launch every four hours at the height of construction. For all the details behind this wildly ambitious and visually stunning space exploration that was not to be, head on over to io9.

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How the space race launched an era of exploration beyond Earth

Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union fueled a technological sprint to space—which culminated with a historic landing on the moon.

Tensions ran high at the Baikonur Cosmodrome on the morning of April 12, 1961, as the Soviet Union prepared to launch the first human into space. Of the 16 previous attempts to propel the U.S.S.R.’s Vostok rocket into orbit, half had failed. Two of the space program’s top engineers reportedly had to take tranquilizers that day as they waited for liftoff at the Kazakh launch site.

But Yuri Gagarin remained calm in the capsule atop the rocket. After months of rigorous physical and technical training, the 27-year-old cosmonaut had been chosen for the historic flight in part for his unflappability. Intelligent, diligent, and well-liked among his comrades, one memo written by Soviet Air Force doctors and obtained by historian Asif Siddiqi noted that Gagarin “understands life better than a lot of his friends.”

At 9:07 a.m., Gagarin called out “ Poyekhali!”— Russian for “Off we go!”—as the rocket lifted off. He narrated his experiences to those on the ground as the rocket’s acceleration to 17,000 miles an hour pushed him back into his seat. “I see the Earth. The g-load is increasing somewhat. I feel excellent, in a good mood. I see the clouds. The landing site ... it's beautiful. What beauty.”

Moments later, the Soviet cosmonaut became the first person in space and, 89 minutes after launch, the first person to orbit the planet. It was a pivotal moment in the space race between the United States and Soviet Union that would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. But it isn’t where the story of human spaceflight truly begins: That trajectory was charted years earlier by another Soviet success.

( Subscriber exclusive: Explore 50 years of lunar visits with our newest moon map .)

The space race begins

Despite being allies during World War II, the U.S. and U.S.S.R. grew increasingly suspicious of one another as the war drew to a close in 1945. The U.S. had just demonstrated its ability to destroy entire cities by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to force Japan’s surrender. Thus began the Cold War , in which the U.S. and U.S.S.R. jockeyed for world dominance.

To prove their superior technological capabilities, both countries began to build massive nuclear arsenals and rockets capable of hitting targets across the world. In the mid-1950s, both countries announced plans to use these rockets to propel artificial satellites into space. While the U.S. scheduled a 1958 launch for its Project Vanguard, the Soviets quietly resolved to beat the Americans to the punch.

On October 4, 1957, the world was taken by surprise when the Soviet Union announced that it had launched a satellite called Sputnik, Russian for “traveling companion ,” into orbit. Although it was no larger than a beach ball and had limited technical capabilities, Americans were frightened as they heard its radio signature “beep, beep, beep” as it passed overhead.

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President Dwight Eisenhower had his own concerns. White House officials fretted over whether the world would see the Soviet Union as the more sophisticated superpower, writing in one report that Sputnik’s launch would “generate myth, legend and enduring superstition of a kind peculiarly difficult to eradicate or modify, which the U.S.S.R. can exploit to its advantage.”

Unwilling to concede space to the Soviet Union, the U.S. established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in July 1958 and began its own pursuit of spaceflight in earnest.

Earliest human flights to space

Human space travel was not a novel concept in the 1950s. The U.S. had been launching rockets with animals — including fruit flies and rhesus macaques —into suborbital space since the late 1940s, while the U.S.S.R. began launching dogs in 1951. Just weeks after Sputnik’s 1957 launch, the Soviets famously sent a dog named Laika into orbit. (Laika died within hours of the flight from heat and stress.)

( Subscriber exclusive: See a visual timeline of every animal ever sent to space .)

But the true goal was to send humans to space. In 1958 NASA launched Project Mercury with three specific goals : Launch an American into orbit around Earth, investigate the human body’s ability to tolerate spaceflight, and bring both the spacecraft and astronaut home safety. The unstated goal: Accomplish all of this before the Soviets.

Yet once again the U.S.S.R. proved a step ahead. Gagarin’s historic flight took place a month before astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961. Although Shepard’s 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7 was a key milestone—watched by millions of television viewers—it was overshadowed by Gagarin’s journey all the way around Earth.

Weeks after Shepard’s flight, President John F. Kennedy stood before a joint session of the U.S. Congress. Acknowledging that the country hadn’t treated space exploration with enough urgency, he declared his intention to make it a priority and issued a new challenge : Put an American on the moon by the end of the decade.

“No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish,” he said. “In a very real sense, it will not be one man going to the moon—if we make this judgment affirmatively, it will be an entire nation.”

Reaching for the moon

Before NASA could venture to the moon, however, its scientists and engineers had much to learn. The space agency pushed forward with Project Mercury, making astronaut John Glenn the first American to orbit Earth in February 1962 . In May 1963 Gordon Cooper completed a 22-orbit flight, a journey that took about 34 hours and 20 minutes. A month later, though, cosmonaut Valery Bykovsky spent four days and 23 hours in space— still the record for the longest solo spaceflight —and Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to fly to space.

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After Mercury, NASA advanced its spaceflight capabilities with Project Gemini. Considered a bridge to the moon , Gemini’s goals were to rendezvous and dock in orbit, test atmospheric reentry maneuvers, and determine how longer periods of space travel affected humans.

Meanwhile, the Soviets were still logging milestones. In March 1965 cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first person to exit an orbiting spacecraft. Lasting 12 minutes, the spacewalk was particularly harrowing : Leonov’s spacesuit was so rigid he had difficulty reentering the spacecraft and ultimately had to release some of his suit’s pressure to close the airlock behind him.

Ten weeks later Ed White became the first American to walk in space , spending 23 minutes floating at the end of a 25-foot umbilical line while he and astronaut James McDivitt in the Gemini 4 capsule circled Earth at 17,000 miles an hour. After that the U.S. began to gain on the Soviets: In December 1965 the astronauts aboard Gemini 7 set the record for the most time in space during a two-week mission. Gemini 8 achieved the first space docking in 1966—though a malfunction sent the spacecraft spinning out of control, to be narrowly recovered by a 35-year-old Neil Armstrong in the commander’s seat .

After 10 crewed flights in five years, the program ended with Gemini 12 on November 15, 1966—a mission during which Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin logged a record-setting five hours and 30 minutes exploring outside a spacecraft. At last it was time to go to the moon.

Footprints on the moon

As it conducted the Gemini missions, NASA had already begun developing the spacecraft for the Apollo program. The vehicle included a command/service module that would fly to the moon and enter orbit, and a lunar module that would undock for landing and then blast off to rejoin the command module for the return trip to Earth.

But the Apollo program got off to a tragic start . On January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee were killed in a fire on the launchpad during a ground test for their planned February mission. An investigation concluded that the fire was sparked by a short circuit in the wires near Grissom’s seat, and that it spread quickly due to high oxygen levels and flammable materials in the cabin.

Following a lengthy reevaluation of the design and safety of the spacecraft, the first crewed Apollo mission launched on October 11, 1968, when Apollo 7 blasted into Earth orbit. On the first of 11 days in space, the three astronauts aboard came down with cold s—learning the hard way that mucus cannot drain from the head in the weightlessness of space.

The mission was followed by the first flight all the way to the moon, more than 230,000 miles away. Before Apollo 8, the farthest humans had been from Earth was about 850 miles. The crew orbited the moon 10 times between December 24 and December 25, reading the opening lines of Genesis to a captivated audience of roughly a billion people —a quarter of the global population—during a Christmas Eve radio broadcast. The three astronauts were the first to see the far side of the moon with their own eyes and watch as Earth rose over the lunar horizon .

Apollo 9 was the first flight with the lunar module, testing the spacecraft in Earth orbit. Apollo 10 took the lunar module to the moon and descended to within 50,000 feet of the surface.

Finally on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 blasted off. On the fifth day in space, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin began preparations to land the lunar module Eagle on the moon’s surface. They touched down at precisely 3:17 p.m. Houston time on July 20—and hours later, at 9:56 p.m., Armstrong became the first person to step on the moon, famously proclaiming: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Over the next two hours , Armstrong and Aldrin collected soil and rock samples and set up experiments. They left an American flag planted on the moon’s surface and a plaque that reads, “We came in peace for all mankind.”

Subsequent lunar exploration

The U.S. would make five more successful crewed trips to the moon’s surface in the years that followed. Astronauts collected samples, ran scientific experiments, and tested a lunar rover. The program ended in December 1972 with Apollo 17, which saw astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt spend more than three days on the moon.

( A brief history of moon exploration .)

After the successful missions to the moon, the U.S. and the Soviet Union began to collaborate. In 1975 the countries launched their first joint mission, Apollo-Soyuz , in which American and Soviet spacecraft successfully docked with one another while in orbit—allowing their crews to meet in space. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. and Russia continued their partnership in space, working together to build the International Space Station .

Several countries have since made uncrewed journeys to the moon, but the U.S. remains the sole country whose astronauts have set foot on the lunar surface. NASA intends to return astronauts to the moon by 2025 with its Artemis program , and other countries such as China also plan to send humans to the moon in the coming years or decades.

In the future, humans may venture all the way to Mars. Such a journey would require technologies that do not exist yet —but the same was true when the Apollo program was announced six decades ago.

“We choose to go to the moon,” Kennedy told the nation in a 1962 address . “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”

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The History of Space Travel Timeline

Albert II became the first monkey in space on June 14, 1949, in a specially adapted US V2 rocket.

To travel into the unknown of space is a dream for so many children and adults alike, although one that very few will ever reach.

Throughout time so many countries, and now private companies, across the world have tried to create a method of getting in amongst the stars.

It’s even united countries that previously had such strong conflict.

Here we’re going to go through a timeline of the significant moments in the history of space travel, starting way back in the 1940s.

In 1942 the German V2 rocket, designed by Wernher Von Braun, was the first to reach 100km (62 miles) from the Earth’s surface.

Also known as the boundary of space.

Braun later worked with NASA on the rockets that went to the moon.

In 1947, the first animals went into space.

Fruit flies were used to study the effects of space travel on animals as they’re very similar to humans.

The flies traveled with a supply of corn to eat on the flight.

Albert II was the first monkey in space.

Albert II was a Rhesus monkey and boldly went where no primate had been before on June 14 , 1949, in a specially adapted US V2 rocket, that flew 83 miles from Earth.

On October 4 , 1957, Russia launched the first space satellite (or sputnik in Russian) named Sputnik 1.

Sputnik 1 was the first satellite in orbit around the earth.

In November the same year, Laika the Russian dog became the first animal to orbit the earth. Laika is Russian for “Barker”.

She traveled in Sputnik 2 and helped understand whether people could survive in space.

By 1959 Both US and Russian scientists were in a race to get a craft to the Moon; the Russians won.

Space-probe Luna 2 crash-landed into the moon at fatal speeds.

Ten years later, the first human visited the surface.

Yuri Gagarin in his space shuttle - the first man in space

On April 12, 1961 , Russian Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.

Traveling in Vostok 1 he completed one orbit of the earth, landing about two hours after launch.

Gagarin had to eject and use a parachute to land as the craft was designed to crash land.

John Glenn became the first US man to orbit the Earth aboard the Friendship 7.

John actually chose this name; officially the craft is called the Mercury-Atlas 6, for the mission Mercury and it being the 6 th flight to use the faster Atlas rocket.

Valentina Tereshkova the first woman in space

Valentina Tereshkova, a Russian cosmonaut, became the first woman in space.

After her mission, she had a crater on the far side of the Moon is named after her.

Who could believe, after just sending men to the moon, NASA managed to successfully conduct the first Mars flyby with their Mariner 4 craft.

In 1963 John F. Kennedy promised that by 1970 the US would have put men on the moon.

NASA firstly sent a robot spaceship called Surveyor 1, to make sure they could safely land.

It reached the moon on May 30 , 1966, just after the Russian probe Luna 9.

Once Surveyor 1 landed it took photographs and sent them back to eagerly awaiting scientists who used them to visualize the terrain and work out a plan to land people on the moon safely.

Neil Armstrong standing next to the American flag on the moon

On July 20 , 1969, the famous “one small step” was taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, and the first words were spoken, “the Eagle has landed”.

This iconic phrase confirmed them as the first men on the moon.

The Apollo 11 craft flew them 250,000 miles to the moon and back.

Apollo 13 on April 13, 1970 , the second day of its trip to the moon, suffered a wiring fault causing an explosion.

Using what was on board, NASA and the astronauts on board made repairs to bring the damaged craft back to Earth.

This saw the first use of the Lunar Rover, an electric vehicle with a top speed of 8 mph (13 kph), to explore the moon on the fourth, fifth and sixth Apollo missions.

The rover took Boeing 17 months to design and develop.

The first-ever space station was launched in 1971, the Russian Salyut 1, and was launched from an unmanned rocket.

In 1973 Mars 2, a 2-part Russian probe explored Mars .

One part was to stay in orbit for the whole year sending pictures back to earth and the other was to land and explore Mars’ surface.

It was destroyed when a parachute failed.

The US launched their Voyager 1 deep space probe.

Voyager 1, on February 17, 1998 , became the most distant human-made object in space after it passed the previous title holder; Pioneer 10.

From April 12, 1981, saw the idea of reusable space crafts, prior to this they were a one-hit-wonder.

The Space Shuttle was designed to lower costs and could be used up to 100 times.

With five rocket motors, it reached 17,000+ mph (27,350+ Kph). Six were built and 2011 saw their last use.

The first craft to start the Space Shuttle era was called Columbia.

Image shows the Space Shuttle Challenger exploding

On January 28, 1986 , Space Shuttle Challenger exploded due to a fuel system failure just after launch.

All seven astronauts were killed.

After this tragedy, all shuttles were grounded for almost three years.

In the same year, Construction started on the MIR space station, the first consistently inhabited long-term space station.

It was built in sections, taking 10 years, with each bit rocket-launched and combined in orbit.

In 2001 it was destroyed on its descent to earth. The ISS or International Space station also started construction in this year designed for research and space exploration.

The final major module of the ISS didn’t arrive until 2010.

The shuttle Discovery was launched to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope into Earth’s Orbit.

The telescope is able to lock onto a target without moving to about the width of a human hair seen a mile away, or more scientifically, more than 7/1000 th of an arcsecond.

Just like there are 60 minutes in an hour, there are 60 arcminutes in 1 degree, and 60 arcseconds in an arcminute.

Helen Sharman the first British woman in space

In 1989, Helen Sharman won a competition to become the first British astronaut in space, she previously worked for Mars Bar.

After 18 months of harsh training, she joined a Russian mission to the MIR space station.

After all their problems, the US and Russia finally start working together, or at least in space terms they were.

This year saw the US shuttle Atlantis dock at the Russian MIR space station.

The first look at mars occurred when Sojourner, A U.S rover, travels onto Mars to explore the planet’s geology.

In 2000 the first permanent crew inhabited the International Space Station (ISS), and have been there ever since.

On April 28, 2001 , US millionaire Dennis Tito spent around $20,000,000 and had 900 hours of training to be the first space tourist for a ride in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

He spent one week in orbit and of this time he spent most visiting the ISS.

This symbolized the hopes for space travel, for it to become a normal venture one day for everyone.

On June 21 , 2004, the first privately funded manned space flight happened with the craft SpaceShipOne.

An adaptation of this technology is being used by Virgin Galactic, a company offering private tourist flights into space.

Even though in 2014 it crashed during testing, flights are still happening.

In this year, the European Space Agency launched their Rosetta probe hoping to reach Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

SpaceX, a private company that built a craft to replace the newly retired Space Shuttle, became the first to launch a privately funded liquid-fueled rocket into Orbit, the Falcon 1.

These rockets are used to launch their Dragon capsule, a remote-controlled capsule that takes supplies to the ISS.

The U.S Messenger mission to Mercury , launched in 2004, made its journey successfully traveling 48 million miles (77 million km), to begin its yearlong orbit of the mysterious planet.

Russia launched the largest space telescope to date named Spekt-R beating the Hubble.

The device is built to study astronomical objects with an angular resolution of a few millionths of an arcsecond.

The colossal telescope weighed 11,000 pounds (5,000 kilograms).

A major moment for commercial space travel started on May 22 nd , SpaceX launched another Dragon C2+ powered by their Falcon 9 rocket to deliver a resupplying capsule to the ISS.

The capsule was caught by the ISS’s robotic arm and docked for nearly six days while astronauts removed cargo and loaded that destined for Earth, a trip it made with no real complications.

NASA’s Curiosity rover, a piece of equipment the size of a car, landed on Mars on August 6 th .

It’s the largest and most advanced rover ever to land on the red planet.

On August 25 th , Voyager 1, launched in the late ‘70s, became the first man-made spacecraft to cross into interstellar space.

The Rosetta probe, launched in 2004, finally reached Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko after a 4 billion-mile journey.

Whilst on the comet, the lander sent data and high-resolution images from the Comet’s surface back to earth including 490-foot cliffs and house-sized boulders.

The Philae lander made a soft landing on November 12 th after a perilous 7-hour descent.

Harpoons designed to attach to the comet failed, and the lander bounced twice before landing successfully.

On March 6 th , NASA’s Dawn spacecraft entered an orbit around a dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter .

With a 590 mile (950 km) diameter, it makes up a quarter of the mass of the belt.

July 14 th saw NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft arrive at Pluto after traveling 9 years and 4.6 billion miles.

It passes, during its closest approach, only 7,750 miles from the surface and took high-resolution photos of Pluto and Charon, the largest moon.

Pluto is said to be about 50 miles larger than thought.

Mars Rover robot on computer-generated martial land

On July 30 , 2020, at 11:50 UTC, NASA launched their Mars Rover, which was the largest of four missions to Mars in 2020 .

Without a doubt, this mission plans to be the most fruitful with the craft equipped with state-of-the-art modern technology and engineering capable of truly exploring the martian land like never before!

The Mars Rover’s mission among other things is to see if the red planet has ever accommodated extra-terrestrial life by exploring any signs of habitable conditions both in the past and present.

Space travel has for so many people mesmerized them from a very young age, myself included, and as this list has shown, there is always something new to discover!

We have barely scratched the surface, and yet every year we learn or launch something new with the dream of reaching some unknown bit of the universe.

To travel to the furthest edge man can reach will always be the aim.

To unearth the secrets hidden, to find life or anything that’s interesting and bewildering drives some of the best minds in the world every day.

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About the author.

Dan Lewis has worked in the tech sector for about 7 years and is qualified in most areas including networking, hardware, software & support. Enjoys writing about anything techy, nerdy or factually interesting.

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The Space Race

By: History.com Editors

Updated: February 21, 2020 | Original: February 22, 2010

June 1965) Astronaut Edward H. White II, pilot for the Gemini-Titan 4 (GT-4) spaceflight, floats in the zero-gravity of space during the third revolution of the GT-4 spacecraft.June 1965) Astronaut Edward H. White II, pilot for the Gemini-Titan 4 (GT-4) spaceflight, floats in the zero-gravity of space during the third revolution of the GT-4 spacecraft. (Photo by: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

After World War II drew to a close in the mid-20th century, a new conflict began. Known as the Cold War, this battle pitted the world’s two great powers—the democratic, capitalist United States and the communist Soviet Union—against each other. Beginning in the late 1950s, space became another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system.

Causes of the Space Race

By the mid-1950s, the U.S.-Soviet Cold War had worked its way into the fabric of everyday life in both countries, fueled by the arms race and the growing threat of nuclear weapons, wide-ranging espionage and counter-espionage between the two countries, war in Korea and a clash of words and ideas carried out in the media. These tensions would continue throughout the space race, exacerbated by such events as the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the outbreak of war in Southeast Asia.

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveler”), the world’s first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth’s orbit. Sputnik’s launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans. In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile–seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space–made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

Did you know? After Apollo 11 landed on the moon's surface in July 1969, six more Apollo missions followed by the end of 1972. Arguably the most famous was Apollo 13, whose crew managed to survive an explosion of the oxygen tank in their spacecraft's service module on the way to the moon.

NASA Is Created

In 1958, the United States launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun . That same year, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA ), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration.

Eisenhower also created two national security-oriented space programs that would operate simultaneously with NASA’s program. The first, spearheaded by the U.S. Air Force, dedicated itself to exploiting the military potential of space. The second, led by the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ), the Air Force and a new organization called the National Reconnaissance Office (the existence of which was kept classified until the early 1990s) was code-named Corona; it would use orbiting satellites to gather intelligence on the Soviet Union and its allies.

Space Race Heats Up: Men (And Chimps) Orbit Earth

In 1959, the Soviet space program took another step forward with the launch of Luna 2, the first space probe to hit the moon. In April 1961, the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit Earth , traveling in the capsule-like spacecraft Vostok 1. For the U.S. effort to send a man into space, dubbed Project Mercury, NASA engineers designed a smaller, cone-shaped capsule far lighter than Vostok; they tested the craft with chimpanzees and held a final test flight in March 1961 before the Soviets were able to pull ahead with Gagarin’s launch. On May 5, astronaut Alan Shepard became the first American in space (though not in orbit).

Later that May, President John F. Kennedy made the bold, public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. In February 1962, John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth, and by the end of that year, the foundations of NASA’s lunar landing program–dubbed Project Apollo –were in place.

Achievements of Apollo

From 1961 to 1964, NASA’s budget was increased almost 500 percent, and the lunar landing program eventually involved some 34,000 NASA employees and 375,000 employees of industrial and university contractors. Apollo suffered a setback in January 1967, when three astronauts were killed after their spacecraft caught fire during a launch simulation. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union’s lunar landing program proceeded tentatively, partly due to internal debate over its necessity and to the untimely death (in January 1966) of Sergey Korolyov, chief engineer of the Soviet space program.

December 1968 saw the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the moon, from NASA’s massive launch facility on Merritt Island, near Cape Canaveral, Florida . On July 16, 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong , Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin and Michael Collins set off on the Apollo 11 space mission, the first lunar landing attempt. After landing successfully on July 20, Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon’s surface; he famously called the momen t “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Who Won the Space Race?

By landing on the moon, the United States effectively “won” the space race that had begun with Sputnik’s launch in 1957. For their part, the Soviets made four failed attempts to launch a lunar landing craft between 1969 and 1972, including a spectacular launch-pad explosion in July 1969. From beginning to end, the American public’s attention was captivated by the space race, and the various developments by the Soviet and U.S. space programs were heavily covered in the national media. This frenzy of interest was further encouraged by the new medium of television. Astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes, and earth-bound men and women seemed to enjoy living vicariously through them. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

With the conclusion of the space race, U.S. government interest in lunar missions waned after the early 1970s. In 1975, the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission sent three U.S. astronauts into space aboard an Apollo spacecraft that docked in orbit with a Soviet-made Soyuz vehicle. When the commanders of the two crafts officially greeted each other, their “ handshake in space ” served to symbolize the gradual improvement of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late Cold War era.

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The Best Children's Site for all things Astronomy, Space and its Exploration!

Space Exploration Timeline & Future Missions For Kids!

History of the space age.

Born from World War II technology, rockets have enabled mankind to put satellites in orbit, send probes to the furthest regions of the solar system and even put men on the Moon! Learn about when, and where, these all happen by reading this timeline of the coolest major milestones and dates of first accomplishments during humanity’s exploration of outer space! Enjoy!

Space Exploration In The 1940’s!

June 20 th 1944 – A V-2 Rocket launched by Nazi Germany during World War II is the first man-made object to go beyond 100 km – the Kármán line – and reach space!
October 24 th 1946 – A captured V-2 rocket in US is launched to 105 km (65 miles) and records the first pictures from space.
February 20 th 1947 – The first animal (fruit flies) reaches space aboard an American V-2.

Space Exploration In The 1950’s!

July 22 nd 1951 – A Soviet R-1 rocket launches the first dogs (Dezik & Tsygan) into space!
October 4 th 1957 – The Soviet Union launches the first satellite into orbit called Sputnik-1 which transmits for 22 days! The Space Race begins!
November 3 rd 1957 – A Soviet rocket launches the first dog (Laika) into orbit!
January 31 st 1958 - The America’s launch their first satellite called Explorer-1 into orbit.
January 4 th 1959 – The USSR launches Luna-1 and is the first satellite to reach the vicinity of the Moon and first to enter heliocentric orbit.
September 13 th 1959 – The USSR launches Luna-2 and is the first probe to touch another world when it impacts with the Moon.
October 4 th 1959 – The USSR launches Luna-3 the first probe to image the far side of the Moon .

Space Exploration In The 1960’s!

January 31 st 1961 – The US launches the first Chimpanzee into space who performs tasks and survives.
April 12 th 1961 – The USSR launches the first human into space - Yuri Gagarin .
May 5 th 1961 – The US launches the first American into space – Alan Shepard .
February 20 th 1962 – The US launches their first man into orbit – John Glenn .
December 14 th 1962 – The first successful planetary flyby ( Venus ) – by Mariner 2 .
June 16 th 1963 – The USSR puts the first women ( Valentina Tereshkova ) into Space!
March 18 th 1965 – Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performs the first spacewalk (extra-vehicular activity) .
July 14 th 1965 – The first flyby of Mars and first close-up photographs from another planet - Mars .
February 3 rd 1966 – First soft landing on another world ( the Moon ) and the first images from the surface.
March 16 th 1966 – During Project Gemini , Gemini 8 completed the first orbital docking between two spacecraft.
December 21 st 1968 – Apollo 8 carries 3 astronauts to the Moon , for the first time humans leave low Earth orbit.
July 20 th 1969 – First human walks on the Moon during Apollo 11 mission !

Space Exploration In The 1970’s

November 17 th 1970 – The USSR lands Lunokhod 1- the first lunar rover.
December 15 th 1970 – USSR conducts the first soft landing on another planet with Venera 7 on Venus .
November 14 th 1971 – Mariner 9 becomes the first probe to orbit another planet.
March 3 rd 1972 – Pioneer 10 becomes the first probe to reach escape velocity of the Solar System and crosses the asteroid belt enroute to Jupiter .
February 5 th 1974 – Mariner 10 uses a gravity assist for the first time enroute to flyby Mercury for the first time!
August 20 th 1977 – Voyager 2 launches on its epic journey through the outer planets.
September 5 th 1977 – Voyager 1 launches bound for Jupiter , Saturn and Titan !

Space Exploration In The 1980’s

April 12 th 1981 – Launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia – the first reusable (orbital) spacecraft!
January 24 th 1986 – First Uranus flyby by Voyager 2 .
January 28 th 1986 – Challenger disintegration shortly after launch.
February 19 th 1986 – Mir Space Station becomes the first consistently inhabited space station.
May 4 th 1989 – The Magellan spacecraft launches from the payload bay of the Space Shuttle bound for Venus to map the surface through the dense clouds.
August 25 th 1989 – First Neptune flyby by Voyager 2 .

Space Exploration In The 1990’s

April 24 th 1990 – The famous Hubble Space Telescope is launched into space aboard Shuttle Discovery .
October 21 st 1991 – The first flyby of an asteroid in the asteroid belt by Galileo.
March 22 nd 1995 - Record longest duration spaceflight (437.7 days) set by Valeri Polyakov.
December 7 th 1995 – Galileo achieves the first orbit of Jupiter .
July 4 th 1997 – Mars Pathfinder becomes the first operational rover on another planet.
October 24 th 1998 – Deep Space 1 launches to test the ion propulsion system .
November 20 th 1998 – Construction of the International Space Station (ISS) begins.

Space Exploration In The 2000’s

February 14 th 2000 – The first spacecraft ( NEAR Shoemaker ) to orbit an asteroid!
April 28 th 2001 – American Dennis Tito became the first paying space tourist to go to space on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and spent 8 days at the ISS.
February 2003 – The Space Shuttle Columbia burns up during re-entry killing 7 astronauts.
July 1 st 2004 – First spacecraft ( Cassini-Huygens ) to enter orbit around Saturn .
January 14 th 2005 – The Huygens probe performs the first soft landing beyond Mars on Titan !
March 6 th 2009 – The Kepler spacecraft is launched to discover Exoplanets in the Milky Way .

Space Exploration In The 2010’s

March 18 th 2011 – A spacecraft orbits Mercury for the first time – MESSENGER .
July 21 st 2011 – The final flight of the Space Shuttle Atlantis signals the end of the Shuttle Program.
May 25 th 2012 – A SpaceX Dragon cargo capsule became the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous with and attach to the ISS.
August 25 th 2012 – A man-made probe reaches interstellar space – Voyager 1!
November 12 th 2014 – The Rosetta spacecraft performs a soft landing on a comet.
March 6 th 2015 – the Dawn spacecraft enters orbit around dwarf planet Ceres becoming the first spacecraft to visit Ceres and to orbit two bodies.
July 15 th 2015 – The New Horizons spacecraft makes the first flyby of Pluto and its moons.
August 10 th 2015 – Lettuce became the first food to be grown and eaten in space.
December 21 st 2015 – Space Exploration Corp (SPACEX) successfully lands the Falcon 9 first stage. The first time an orbital class rocket has been recovered.
March 30 th 2016 – SpaceX reuses a previously flown Falcon 9 first-stage, the first orbital-class 1 st stage to be reflown in history.

Missions and Spaceflight Milestones Of The Future!

2019/2020 - Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin will start taking paying space tourists into space via sub-orbital flights.
2019/2020 – SpaceX and Boeing plan to launch astronauts to the International Space Station aboard their Starliner and Dragon Crew capsules!
2021 – NASA plans to launch the James Webb Telescope which will likely create many discoveries.
2023 – NASA intends to send astronauts on a lunar flyby mission aboard their new Space Launch System (SLS) rocket. The first time humans have left low Earth orbit since 1972 (the Apollo 17 mission).
2024 – SpaceX intends to send their new Starship spacecraft on a trip around the Moon with paying passengers for a journey called Dear Moon !
2030 – The European Space Agency (ESA) Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer will enter orbit around Ganymede becoming the first probe to orbit another planets moon.
2030s – NASA plans to launch the Orion spacecraft using the Space Launch System (SLS) and send astronauts on a 2 year journey to Mars .
2050’s – Could humans send a manned mission to the moons of Saturn ?
2100’s – Could human beings build an interstellar spaceship capable of travelling to a nearby star system with Earth-like exoplanets ? Is this our destiny to venture out, explore and live amongst the stars of the Milky Way Galaxy ?

Back To Space Exploration

Cool future missions.

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The Evolution of Space Travel: Then and Now

The Education and Public Programs Team at the Nixon Library is pleased to remind you that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) continues to be an excellent source for entertaining and historical content! Simply follow the links below for additional information.

Replicas of the Apollo 11 Space Suit and the Apollo 16 EMU Space Suit. Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives and Records Administration, Prop 1148, P.2015.6

President Dwight Eisenhower created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on July 29, 1958. Its mission was to coordinate the United States’ advancement in space and its context was direct competition between the two greatest antagonists of the Cold War: the United States and the Soviet Union. The space race would be "another dramatic arena for this competition, as each side sought to prove the superiority of its technology, its military firepower and–by extension–its political-economic system.” Richard Nixon, elected into office in November 1968, inherited the Cold War and the tensions associated with it, both on earth and in space. A decade of “effort, expertise and coordination” helped propel the United States of America to victory in the “Space Race.” Ten years of planning and persistence culminated in all six lunar landings occurring during Richard Nixon’s presidency.

American lunar landings ended in 1972, but the advancement of space travel and exploration continues with NASA’s Artemis Program aiming to land on the moon once again in 2024. Privatized space exploration, pioneered by Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, is now dominating a domain once solely reserved for government agencies. The space race has evolved from competition between two powerful nations with warring ideologies to private companies and billionaire entrepreneurs vying for customers in the realm of space tourism in the final frontier.

Symbols of NASA-Designed in 1959, the "meatball" as it is affectionately called, was the agency's logo for 16 years until it was replaced in 1975 by the more modern looking "worm" design. The "meatball" was resurrected in 1992 and is the most recognized symbol of the organization. “Symbols of NASA,” NASA, last modified September 30, 2019, https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/symbols-of-nasa.html

NASA, and its creation of the Apollo Program in 1961, thrived due to support and generous government funding from President John F. Kennedy. In a joint message to Congress on May 25, 1961, Kennedy stated, “I believe the nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." Lyndon Johnson's administration continued to support increased agency funding, reaching an all-time high of 4.4% of the national budget in 1966. During the Nixon administration, eight years after the program began, on July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 space mission touched down on the surface of the Moon. American astronaut Neil Armstrong uttered his famous phrase, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." Armstrong and fellow astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin planted the American flag into the surface of the Moon, and the United States reigned victorious.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin re-creates his moonwalk at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda on June 12, 2013. Photographs Courtesy of the Richard Nixon Foundation.

NASA achieved what many thought impossible, landing humans on the Moon and bringing them safely back to Earth , ultimately winning the Space Race during the Cold War. History was also made when the two astronauts received an interplanetary congratulatory phone call from President Nixon, the longest distance phone call ever made, on July 20, 1969 at 11:45 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

Split-screen of President Richard Nixon and the Apollo 11 astronauts on a White House television, July 20, 1969. (NAID 66394157 ).

While in the White House Oval Office on July 20, 1969, President Nixon used this green telephone to talk to the Apollo 11 astronauts while they walked on the moon. Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, National Archives and Records Administration, 1979.12

Four days later, the President welcomed home the Apollo 11 crew in person aboard the USS Hornet in the Pacific Ocean. The final lunar landing, Apollo 17, occurred in December of 1972.

"President Nixon - Welcome - Apollo XI Astronauts - USS Hornet." Photograph. NASA. From JSC, July 24, 1969. https://images.nasa.gov/details-S69-21365 (accessed July 14, 2021).

Man's exploration of the Moon was challenging, expensive, wondrous, tragic, and breathtaking. NASA’s almost five billion dollar budget in 1969 prompted the President to reevaluate the space program's importance in comparison to the many national issues needing attention and funding. On March 7, 1970, President Nixon changed the trajectory of the space program stating, “We must think of [space activities] as part of a continuing process and not as a series of separate leaps, each requiring a massive concentration of energy. Space expenditures must take their proper place within a rigorous system of national priorities.” By January 1972, Nixon had outlined a vision to revolutionize space travel that would take away the astronomical costs and make space more accessible for all Americans. These decisions reined in budget expenditure, “ promoted increased international participation in U.S. human spaceflight programs , and prompted the expansion of privatized space exploration happening today.

On May 22, 1972, Nixon became the first United States President to visit Moscow. Subsequent meetings brought diplomacy in space through the Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes . This agreement laid the foundation for the 1975 linking of an Apollo spacecraft with a Soviet Soyuz command module during the Ford administration. Its mission, a nine-day space flight, tested the “ compatibility of rendezvous and docking systems and the possibility of an international space rescue. ” President Nixon’s space diplomacy set the groundwork for the current International Space Station in orbit by promoting technological growth and easing the financial burden of space exploration through pooled resources.

President Nixon and Alexei Kosygin signing the Space Agreement titled "The Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes." 5/24/1972, Moscow, Russia, USSR, Grand Kremlin Palace, St. Vladimir Hall. (WHPO-9179-06)

Space race 2.0.

A Virgin Galactic spacecraft flew into space, a first for the space tourism company, during a flight on Thursday high above the Mojave Desert in California. Hartman, Matt, Photographer. “Virgin Galactic Rocket Ship Reaches Space, a Milestone in Space Tourism,” Photograph, Associated Press. From New York Times , December 13, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/science/virgin-galactic-spaceship.html (accessed July 14, 2021).

On September 21, 2020, NASA published an update to its newest mission, the Artemis Plan , stating, “In its formal plan, NASA captures Artemis progress to date, identifying the key science, technology, and human missions, as well as the commercial and international partnerships that will ensure we continue to lead in exploration and achieve our ambitious goal to land astronauts on the Moon.”

The astronauts chosen will include the first woman and the first person of color to walk on the moon in the year 2024. To become an astronaut with NASA, potential candidates must be U.S. citizens, earn a master's degree in biological science, physical science, computer science, engineering, or math, have 1,000 hours as a pilot in command of an aircraft, and pass the flight astronaut physical exam. The budding industry of space tourism spearheaded by billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos will help bypass NASA’s stringent regulations. The current price tag: $250,000 . After his landmark flight this month, Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Galactic stated, “We’re here to make space more accessible to all.” The Space Race - albeit reimagined in the 21st Century to include commercial partnerships and space tourism - continues thanks to the legacies of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford.

How the Key Bridge Collapsed in Baltimore: Maps and Photos

By Weiyi Cai , Agnes Chang , Lauren Leatherby , Lazaro Gamio , Leanne Abraham and Scott Reinhard

On Tuesday, a major bridge in Baltimore collapsed into the water seconds after it was struck by a cargo ship, sending vehicles on the bridge into the river below. The ship lost power and issued a mayday call shortly before it hit the bridge.

A video shows the cargo ship striking the bridge and the resulting collapse of the bridge.

The ship, a 948-foot-long cargo vessel called Dali, was about a half hour into its journey toward Colombo, Sri Lanka, when it hit a main pillar of the bridge. All crew members are safe, according to the ship’s owners.

Follow our live coverage .

A mayday call from the ship gave officials enough time to stop traffic at both ends of the bridge. The waters where the bridge collapsed are about 50 feet deep. By Tuesday morning, six construction workers who had been fixing potholes on the bridge remained missing as divers and other emergency workers on boats and helicopters continued to search for them. Two others had been rescued, and one was in the hospital.

Francis Scott

Patapsco River

The ship left the Port

of Baltimore around

1 a.m. on Tuesday.

Where impact occurred

Direction of the ship

The ship hit the

bridge at 1:28 a.m.

The ship hit the bridge at 1:28 a.m.

Where impact

Source: Spire Global

The New York Times; satellite image by Google Earth

The lights of the ship flickered on and off as it lost power in the minutes before the ship changed bearing and hit the bridge.

Ship approached from

the Port of Baltimore

Road repair crews

Ship changed heading

as it neared pillar

Ship hit pillar

Southern and central spans

of bridge began to collapse within

seconds of impact

Northern span began to

collapse seconds later

Within 30 seconds of impact,

the central part of bridge had

entirely collapsed.

Source: StreamTime Live via YouTube

Timestamps are from StreamTime Live video.

The New York Times

The Francis Scott Key Bridge was opened in 1977 and carried more than 12.4 million vehicles last year. The bridge was one of the three major ways to cross the Patapsco River and formed part of Baltimore’s beltway.

The Port of Baltimore is a major trade hub that handled a record amount of foreign cargo last year. It is an especially important destination — the nation’s largest by volume last year — for deliveries of cars and light trucks.

Ship impact

To Chesapeake Bay

Sources: Maryland Port Administration, OpenStreetMap, MarineTraffic

Note: Ship positions are as of 2:46 p.m. Eastern time.

Overall, Baltimore was the 17th biggest port in the United States in 2021, ranked by total tons, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The bridge collapse brought marine traffic there to a standstill, with seven cargo or tanker ships stranded in the harbor as of Tuesday afternoon.

Gov. Wes Moore declared a state of emergency for Maryland and said that his office was in close communication with Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. transportation secretary. The White House issued a statement saying that President Biden had been briefed on the collapse.

A photo shows the cargo ship with the collapsed bridge.

Erin Schaff/The New York Times

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