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Launching of Sputnik I
The first Man-Made artificial artifact was launched to space. -
Period: to
Space Race
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First animal in space
The USSR put the first animal in space, a dog. -
Luna 2
Luna 2 was the second of the Soviet Union's Luna programmed spacecraft launched to the Moon. It was the first spacecraft to reach the surface of the Moon. It successfully impacted with the lunar surface east of Mare Serenitatis near the craters Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus. -
Telsar 1
The US satelite, Telstar 1, beams the first Transatlantic telecast. -
Mariner 2
The first successful planetary spacecraft, US's Mariner 2, flies past Venus and enters a solar orbit. -
First Woman in Space
The Vostok 6 Takes Soviet Valentia Tereshkova, the first woman in space and orbits the Earth 48 times. -
Americas First Spacewalk
Ed White performs Americas first Spacewalk while Jim Mcdivitt remained in the capsule. -
Venera 3
The Venera 3 (sent by the Soviet Union) crash-landed on Venus on March 1, 1966 becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface. It impacted on the night side of Venus, near the terminator. However, its communications systems failed before it could return any information about the planet. -
U.S Lunar Orbital 1 enters moon orbit
U.S. Lunar Orbiter 1 enters moon orbit, and takes the first picture of the Earth from the moon. -
Apollo 8
Men did 10 lunar orbits and took the famous picture of the Earth Rising. -
US puts first man on the moon
Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin JR. make the first landing on the moon. Armstrong saying, "One small step for man, one giant leap for man kind." -
Apollo 13
Apollo 13 is launched, but suffering an explosion in its SM Oxygen tanks the mission is aborted. They returned home safely. -
Apollo 14
Apollo 14 moon mission is launched by the U.S. with Alan Shepard, Stuart Roosa, and Edgar Mitchell on board. They land in the Apollo 13 site, the Fra Mauro highlands, which they explore with the help of a two-wheeled cart that permits the transport of a significantly greater quantity of lunar material than previous missions. Shepard becomes the first man to hit a golf ball on the moon. -
First space station launched
Salyut 1 was the first space station of any kind, launched by the USSR on April 19, 1971. It was launched unmanned using a Proton-K rocket. Its first crew came later in Soyuz 10, but was unable to dock completely; its second crew launched in Soyuz 11 and remained on board for 23 days. However, a pressure-equalization valve in the Soyuz 11 reentry capsule opened prematurely when the crew was returning, killing all three -
Apollo 17's Return from the Moon
Apollo 17 was the eleventh and final manned mission in the American Apollo space program. Launched at 12:33 a.m. on December 7, 1972, with a crew of Commander Eugene Cernan, Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, and Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, Apollo 17 remains the most recent manned Moon landing.
