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Early spaceships
Spaceships were built and later launched in 1957 by the Soviet Union, now called Russia. The first manned spacecraft was also built and launched by the Soviet Union. It was called Vostok 1. -
first animal in space
The first animal to make an orbital spaceflight around the Earth was the dog Laika, aboard the Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2. -
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The biggest spaceships
The biggest rocket ever built was the Saturn V rocket, used in the Apollo program for nearly a decade between the early '60s and early '70s. -
first man on the moon
On 21 July 1969, Armstrong became the first person to step onto the Moon. He was joined by Aldrin 19 minutes later. The two spent about two hours together outside the lunar module, taking photographs and collecting 21.5 kg of lunar material to be tested back on Earth. -
The lunching of the Hubble telescope
First conceived in the 1940s and initially called the Large Space Telescope, the Hubble Space Telescope took decades of planning and research before it launched on April 24, 1990. -
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The first rover on mars
Mars Pathfinder was launched December 4, 1996 and landed on Mars on July 4, 1997. It was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver an instrumented lander and the first-ever robotic rover to the surface of the red planet -
The farthest spaceship
At approximately 2:10 p.m. Pacific time on February 17, 1998, Voyager 1, launched more than two decades ago, will cruise beyond the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, and become the most distant human-created object in space at 10.4 billion kilometers (6.5 billion miles.) -
The fastest spaceship
The fastest speed by a spacecraft is 163 km/s (586,800 km/h; 364,660 mph), which was achieved by the Parker Solar Probe at 21:25:24 UTC on 20 November 2021.
