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USSR Launches Sputnik1
The world's first artificial satellite was about the size of a beach ball (58 cm.or 22.8 inches in diameter), weighed only 83.6 kg. or 183.9 pounds, and took about 98 minutes to orbit the Earth on its elliptical path. While the Sputnik launch was a single event, it marked the start of the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. -
Explorer 1, the first American satellite to reach orbit, is launched. It carried scientific equipment that lead to the discovery of the Van Allen radiation belt.
With a brilliant flash and billowing smoke one night over the windswept sands of Florida's Atlantic coast, America's aspirations in space were dramatically rescued. In the Cold War environment after World War II, the country had been humiliated when the Soviet Union put not one but two Sputnik satellites in orbit in the fall of 1957. The wound deepened when the United States' contender, a rocket called Vanguard, exploded on the launch pad a few weeks later. -
Usa- Explorer 2 is launched but it fails to reach orbit
Explorer 2 was similar to Explorer 1. It failed to reach orbit, when the fourth stage failed to fire -
The Vanguard 1 satellite is launched. It continues to function for 3 years.
USA- Vanguard 1 was a small earth-orbiting satellite designed to test the launch capabilities of a three-stage launch vehicle and the effects of the environment on a satellite and its systems in Earth orbit. It also was used to obtain geodetic measurements through orbit analysis. -
Sputnik 3 is launched.- USSR
Soviet Sputnik 3 was launched on May 15, under the International Geophysical Year programme. It is designed to study the upper layers of the atmosphere and cosmic space. -
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is formed, it replaces the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA).
"An Act to provide for research into the problems of flight within and outside the Earth's atmosphere, and for other purposes." -
Pioneer 1 is launched to a height of 70,700 miles.
Pioneer 1, the second and most successful of three project Able space probes and the first spacecraft launched by the newly formed NASA, was intended to study the ionizing radiation, cosmic rays, magnetic fields, and micrometeorites in the vicinity of the Earth and in lunar orbit. Due to a launch vehicle malfunction, the spacecraft attained only a ballistic trajectory and never reached the Moon. It did return data on the near-Earth space environment. -
USSR launches Sputnik 2 which carried a small dog named Laika into orbit.
the Soviet press boasted about the 508.3-kilogram (1,120.8-pound) spacecraft carrying the first-ever live passenger -- a dog named Laika. However it soon became clear that the animal would not return. -
Luna 1 is launched by the USSR. It is the first man made object to orbit the Sun.
Luna 1, also known as Mechta, E-1 No.4 and First Cosmic Ship, was the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the Moon, and the first spacecraft to be placed in heliocentric orbit. -
Pioneer 4 is launched on a Earth-Moon trajectory. It passed within 37,000 miles of the Moon before falling into a solar orbit.
Pioneer 4 was a spin-stabilized spacecraft launched as part of the Pioneer program on a lunar flyby trajectory and into a heliocentric orbit making it the first U.S. probe to escape from the Earth's gravity. -
The "Mercury Seven" astronauts are selected by NASA.
USA- In volunteering to entrust their lives to Mercury's spirit and Atlas' strength to blaze a trail for man into the empyrean, they chose to lead by following the opportunity that chance, circumstance, technology, and history had prepared for them. Influential 20th-century philosophers as diverse as Bertrand Russell, Teilhard de Chardin, and Walter Kaufmann tell us that man's profoundest aspiration is to know himself and his universe and that life's deepest passion is a desire -
Luna 2 is launched. It impacts the Moon on September 13, becoming the first man-made object to do so.
Impacted Moon 9/13/59 at 22:02:04 UT
Palus Putredinis, 29.10°N lat., 0.0° long. -
Luna 3 orbits the Moon and photographs 70% of its surface.
USSR- One of the origins of Luna-3 was the work by Boris Raushenbakh on attitude control started in 1955 in the NII-1 rocket research institute of the Ministry of Aviation. This work was co-ordinated with Korolev's design bureau and had as its goal stabilised photo-reconnaissance satellites. -
Tiros 1, the first successful weather satellite, is launched.
USA- The TIROS Program (Television Infrared Observation Satellite) was NASA's first experimental step to determine if satellites could be useful in the study of the Earth. At that time, the effectiveness of satellite observations was still unproven. -
The US launches Discoverer XIV, its first camera equipped spy satellite.
Discoverer 14 was the first successful low resolution photo surveillance spacecraft launched by the US Air Force. It was launched into a polar orbit by a Thor booster from Vandenberg AFB. After the Thor exhausted its fuel, the Agena A vehicle atop the Thor separated from it. -
John F. Kennedy is elected the 35th President of the United States.
Kennedy needed Johnson's strength in the South to win what was considered likely to be the closest election since 1916. Major issues included how to get the economy moving again, Kennedy's Roman Catholicism, Cuba, and whether the Soviet space and missile programs had surpassed those of the U.S.
