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1
The Soviet Union's Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space with a 108-minute flight on Vostok 1 in which he completed one orbit. -
2
Mercury Freedom 7 launches on a Redstone rocket for a 15-minute suborbital flight, making Alan Shepard the first American in space. -
3
Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to fly into space. -
4
Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk from the Voskhod 2 orbiter. -
5
Gemini 8 launches on a Titan 2 rocket and later docks with a previously launched Agena rocket — the first docking between two orbiting spacecraft. -
6
Soyuz 1 launches but myriad problems surface. The solar panels do not unfold, there are stability problems and the parachute fails to open on descent causing the death of Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. -
7
The Apollo 11 crew become the first humans to land on the Moon. -
8
An explosion ruptures the command module of Apollo 13, days after launch and within reach of the moon. Abandoning the mission to save their lives, the astronauts climb into the Lunar Module and slingshot around the Moon to speed their return back to Earth. -
9
Soyuz 11 launches successfully, docking with Salyut 1. The three cosmonauts are killed during re-entry from a pressure leak in the cabin. -
10
Skylab, the first American space station, crashes back to Earth in the sparsely populated grasslands of western Australia. -
11
Sally Ride aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger becomes the first American woman in space. -
12
Astronauts Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart maneuver as many as 328 feet (100 meters) from the Space Shuttle Challenger using the Manned Maneuvering Unit, which contains small thrusters, in the first ever untethered spacewalks. -
13
Challenger crew repairs the Solar Max satellite during a spacewalk. -
14
Challenger explodes 73 seconds after launch, grounding the shuttle fleet for more than two years. -
15
A two-cosmonaut crew launches aboard Soyuz T-15 to power up the Mir space station. During their 18-month mission, they also revive the abandoned Salyut 7, and -
16
Russia's Zarya control module, the first segment of the International Space Station, launches into space and unfurls its solar arrays. -
17
The Chandra X-ray observatory, NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy, launches aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. -
18
The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates as it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere, killing the crew. Damage from insulating foam hitting the orbiter's leading wing on lift off is later cited as the cause of the accident. -
19
Yang Liwei becomes China's first taikonaut, having launched aboard Shenzhou 5. -
20
Oct. 12, 2005: A two-taikonaut crew launches aboard the Chinese Shenzhou 6.
