| 1895 | Russia | Russian scientist Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovsky publishes Gryozy o zemle i nebe/Dreams of Earth and Sky. The first book about space travel, it discusses the possibility of space flight using liquid-fuelled rockets, and the idea of designing spacecraft with a closed biological cycle to provide oxygen from plants for long flights. |
| 20 September 1951 | USA | The US Air Force makes the first successful recovery of animals from a rocket flight when a monkey and 11 mice are recovered from a flight to an altitude of 72,000 m/236,000 ft. |
| 4 October 1957 | USSR | The USSR launches the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, to study the cosmosphere. It weighs 84 kg/184 lb and circles the Earth in 95 minutes, inaugurating the space age. |
| 14 September 1959 | USSR | The Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 (launched on 12 September) becomes the first spacecraft to strike the Moon. |
| 7 October 1959 | USSR | The Soviet Luna 3 (launched on 4 October) takes the first photographs of the far side of the Moon. |
| 5 May 1961 | USA | US astronaut Alan Shepard in the Mercury capsule Freedom 7 makes a 14.8-minute single sub-orbital flight. He is the first US astronaut in space. |
| 20 February 1962 | USA | US astronaut John Glenn, in the Mercury capsule Friendship 7, becomes the first US astronaut to orbit the Earth. He makes three orbits. |
| 16 June 1963 | USSR | Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, is launched into a three-day orbital flight aboard Vostok 6, to study the problem of weightlessness. |
| 28 November 1964 | USA | The USA launches Mariner 4 to Mars. It will pass within 9,800 km/6,118 mi of the planet on 14 July 1965, and relay the first close-up photographs of the surface, as well as information on the Martian atmosphere. |
| 18 March 1965 | USSR | Soviet cosmonaut Alexsi Leonov leaves spacecraft Voskhod 2 and floats in space for 20 minutes – the first space walk. |
| 3–7 June 1965 | USA | US astronaut Edward White, during the Gemini 4 space mission, demonstrates the ability of humans to function in outer space when he makes a 22-minute space walk, the first by a US astronaut. He is also the first to use a personal propulsion pack during the walk. |
| 3 February 1966 | USSR | Soviet spacecraft Luna 9 (launched 31 January) makes the first soft landing on the Moon and transmits photographs and soil data for three days. |
| 1 March 1966 | USSR | Soviet probe Venera 3 (launched 16 November 1965) crash-lands on Venus, the first artificial object to land on another planet. |
| 10 August 1966 | USA | The US spacecraft Lunar Orbiter 1 enters the Moon's orbit and transmits pictures of the dark side. It is the first of a series of five uncrewed spacecraft that photograph the Moon to select sites for the Apollo missions and to make detailed lunar maps. |
| 27 January 1967 | USA | Three US astronauts, Gus Grissom, Edward White, and Roger B Chaffee, die in a fire during a countdown rehearsal on the Apollo 1 spacecraft at Cape Kennedy, Florida. They are the first human casualties of the US space programme. |
| 17 April 1967 | USA | The US spacecraft Surveyor 3 is launched and soft lands on the Moon where it conducts sampling experiments on the lunar soil. It is subsequently visited by astronauts from the Apollo 12 mission. |
| 18 October 1967 | USSR | The Soviet spacecraft Venera 4 (launched 12 June) lands on Venus. The first soft landing on another planet, its instrument-laden capsule transmits information about Venus' atmosphere. |
| 19 April 1971 | USSR | The USSR launches the 15-m/50-ftlong Salyut 1 space station. Visited by a three-person crew from 7 to 29 June, the cosmonauts die during their return to Earth when a faulty valve causes their capsule to lose pressure. The station re-enters the Earth's atmosphere six months later. |
| 24 November 1971 | USA | The US space probe Mariner 9 (launched in May) becomes the first artificial object to orbit another planet (Mars); it transmits 7,329 photographs of the planet and its two moons, Deimos and Phobos. |
| 23 July 1972 | USA | The USA launches Landsat 1, the first of a series of satellites for surveying the Earth's resources from space. |
| May 1973 | USA | NASA launches Skylab, the first US space station. It contains a workshop for carrying out experiments in weightlessness, an observatory for monitoring the Sun, and cameras for photographing the Earth's surface. Skylab is subsequently visited by three three-person crews, and astronauts make observations of the Sun, manufacture superconductors, and conduct other scientific and medical experiments. |
| 14 May 1973–8 February 1974 | USA | The USA launches the Skylab space station. It contains a workshop for carrying out experiments in weightlessness. It is visited by three three-person crews and astronauts make observations of the Sun, manufacture superconductors, and conduct other scientific and medical experiments. The third mission lasts a record 84 days and gathers data about long space flights. |
| December 1973 | USA | The US probe Pioneer 10 (launched 2 March 1972) passes within 130,000 km/81,000 mi of Jupiter taking hundreds of photographs. It is destined to travel beyond the Solar System, leaving it on 13 June 1983. |
| 15 July 1975 | USA, USSR | The launch of the Soviet spaceship Soyuz 19 signals the start of a joint US–Soviet space mission. US and Soviet astronauts meet in space on 17 July when Soyuz 19 docks with its NASA counterpart, Apollo 18. |
| 1 August 1975 | Europe | The European Space Agency is founded in Paris, France, to undertake research and develop technologies for use in space. |
| 22–25 October 1975 | USSR | The Soviet spacecraft Venera 9 and Venera 10, launched on 8 June and 14 June respectively, land on Venus and transmit the first pictures from the surface of another planet. |
| 1976 | USA | The US spacecraft Viking 1 and Viking 2 (launched in 1975) soft-land on Mars (20 July, 7 August). They make meteorological readings of the Martian atmosphere and search for traces of bacterial life which prove inconclusive. |
| July 1979 | USA | The US space station Skylab 1 falls back to Earth after travelling 140 million km/87 million mi in orbit since 1973. |
| 4 December 1979 | French Guiana | The European Space Agency's first Ariane rocket is launched from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana; it is designed to deploy satellites into orbit. |
| 13 June 1983 | USA | The US space probe Pioneer 10, launched 3 March 1972, becomes the first artificial object to leave the Solar System. |
| 18–24 June 1983 | USA | The US Challenger mission (launched 18 June) includes Sally Ride, the first US woman to go into space. |
| January 1986 | USA | The US space probe Voyager 2 passes within 81,000 km/50,600 mi of Uranus; photographs taken by the probe reveal ten unknown satellites and two new rings. |
| 28 January 1986 | USA | The US space shuttle Challenger explodes shortly after take-off, killing the crew of seven and setting the US space programme back years. |
| 19 February 1986 | USSR | The USSR launches the core unit of the Mir 1 space station; it is intended to be permanently occupied. |
| 24 April 1990 | USA | The space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope in Earth orbit; the main mirror proves to be defective. |
| 18–26 May 1991 | England | English chemist Helen Sharman becomes the first Briton to go into space, as a participant in a Soviet space mission launched in Soyuz TM-12. She spends six days with Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station. |
| 4 June 1996 | Europe, French Guiana | The European Space Agency's Arianespace launches the new Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana, after ten years of development work. It veers off course immediately after takeoff on its maiden flight and is blown up for safety reasons, setting the European space programme back several years. |
| 2 July 1996 | USA | The US aerospace company Lockheed Martin unveils plans for the X-33, a $1 billion wedge-shaped rocket ship. Called the Venture Star, it will be built and operated by Lockheed Martin and will replace the US space shuttle fleet by the year 2012. |
| 4 July 1997 | USA | The US spacecraft Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars. Two days later the probe's rover Sojourner, a six-wheeled vehicle that is controlled by an Earth-based operator, begins to explore the area around the spacecraft. |
| 7 August 1997 | USA | The US Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft reports the discovery of bacteria on Mars, but later reports there was no bacterial life after all. |
| 6 January 1998 | USA | The US spacecraft Lunar Prospector is launched to gather information on the Moon's resources, structure, and origin. |
| 26 January 1998 | world | Analysis of high-resolution images from the Galileo spacecraft suggests that the icy crust of Europa, Jupiter's fourth-largest moon, may hide a vast ocean that might be warm enough to support life. |
| 5 March 1998 | USA | US scientists announce that the Lunar Prospector satellite has detected hydrogen in the polar regions of the Moon, probably in the form of water, frozen in craters which never see the Sun. Scientists estimate that as much as 11 million tonnes of water may be present. |
| 7 July 1998 | Japan | Two Japanese satellites, using sensors and lasers, perform the first automatic docking of a space vehicle. |
| 1 June 1999 | Russia | The Russian space agency orders the cosmonauts aboard the Mir space station to return to Earth in August, abandoning the problem-ridden space station. |
| July 1999 | | The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) crash-lands the spacecraft Lunar Prospector on the Moon, in order to stir up debris that can be analysed for evidence of water vapour. |
| 20 November 1999 | China | China launches its first spacecraft, an uncrewed vehicle that travels for 21 hours in space, from the Jinquan satellite centre in the northwest province of Gansu. |
| 11 February–22 February 2000 | USA | The space shuttle Endeavour carries out a mission in which it scans the Earth's surface with radar signals to create a detailed topographical map of the world. |
| 23 March 2001 | | After 15 years in space (many more than originally planned), Russia's Mir orbital station is deliberately crashed into the Pacific Ocean, disintegrating as it passes through the Earth's atmosphere. |
| 30 April 2001 | | A Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying the first space tourist, US financier Dennis Tito, docks with the International Space Station. Tito pays US$20 million for the privilege. |
| 1 March 2002 | French Guiana | The European Space Agency's environmental satellite Envisat, the most sophisticated environmental laboratory ever put into space, is launched into orbit successfully from French Guiana in South America. |
| 1 February 2003 | | The US space shuttle Columbia explodes and breaks up on re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere. The crew of six US and one Israeli are all killed in the disaster. |
| 2 June 2003 | | The spacecraft Mars Express, built by the European Space Agency (ESA), takes off from a launch pad in Kazakhstan carrying the Beagle 2 lander on its way to Mars. It is Europe's first exploration mission to another planet. |
| 7 July 2003 | | Following a two-week delay due to bad weather and technical problems, the USA's latest Mars rover is launched from Cape Canaveral space centre aboard a Delta II rocket. Opportunity, and another rover vehicle Spirit which was launched the previous month, are due to land on the planet in early 2004. |
| 15 October 2003 | | China becomes the third country to put a man in space after Russia and the USA as its first crewed spacecraft, navigated by Lt-Col Yang Liwei, touches down in inner Mongolia at the end of a 21-hour mission. |
| 25 December 2003 | | Beagle 2, the small British space probe aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express craft, is scheduled to touch down on the surface of the planet Mars but fails to return a radio signal, raising concerns that it may have crashed or malfunctioned. |
| 4–31 January 2004 | | Two US space probes, Spirit and Opportunity, land successfully on Mars to begin investigations into whether the planet ever had water and if it could have supported life. By the end of the month there remains no contact with the British Beagle 2 probe which should have touched down on Mars on 25 December 2003. |
| 21 June 2004 | | SpaceShipOne (SS-1) becomes the world's first crewed commercial craft in space. Taking off from the Mojave desert in California, the privately-built SS-1 piloted by Mike Melvill breaks out of Earth's atmosphere to briefly touch the edge of space at an altitude of 100 km/62 mi. |
| 9 August 2005 | | The US space shuttle Discovery returns safely to Earth from its mission to the International Space Station, following an unprecedented spacewalk by one of the astronauts to carry out external safety repairs in orbit. The shuttle's delayed landing is switched from Florida to California because of bad weather. |
| 19 January 2006 | | The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) successfully launches the first ever mission to Pluto. The uncrewed probe called New Horizons will take until 2015 to reach the planet. |
| 11 April 2006 | | The Venus Express space probe, the European Space Agency's first exploratory mission to Earth's neighbouring planet, reaches Venus and successfully goes into orbit after a five-month, 248-million mile trip. |
| 24 August 2006 | | The International Astronomical Union downgrades the status of Pluto from a ‘classical’ to a ‘dwarf’ planet, leaving Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune as full planets in the Solar System. |
| 5 December 2006 | | The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveils plans to build a permanent manned base on the Moon within 20 years, which will be used for missions to Mars and for monitoring the Earth. |
