Top 50 Moments in the History of Space Travel and Discovery

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Only until relatively recently has man been able to go into space. However, even in this short period of time, much has happened. Check out below for the top 50 moments in the history of space travel and discovery.

#50 – 40. Moments in the History of Space Travel

#50. April 28, 2001 – Dennis Tito, an American businessman, is the first space tourist. He paid the Russians $20 million for his flight

#49. July 15, 1975 – The USSR and the USA perform the first multinational manned mission with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.

#48. December 21, 1968 – Launch of Apollo 8 which became the first spacecraft to circle the Moon.

#47. May 28, 1959 – First creatures to return alive from space. They were rhesus monkey named Able and squirrel monkey named Baker.

#46. October 4, 1957 – The USSR launches Sputnik I. It is the first artificial earth satellite. It orbited for 3 weeks before its batteries died and another 2 months before it fell back to earth.

#45. May 10, 1946 – First space research flight (cosmic radiation experiments) is made by the US using a captured and improved V-2 rocket.

#44. July 21, 2011 – Final space shuttle mission ends when Atlantis arrives at Kennedy Space Center.

#43. April 12, 1981 – Shuttle Columbia becomes first winged spaceship to orbit Earth and return to airport landing.

#42. July 20, 1976 – Viking I is the first successful Mars landing. It continued its missions for 2307 days or over 6¼ years.

#41. June 29, 1995 – Atlantis docks with Mir in the first US shuttle Russian space station hookup.

#40. June 16, 1963 – Russian, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to go into space. She was picked by the USSR because she was under 30 years of age; under 5′6″ tall; under 154 lb in weight; physically fit; ideologically pure; and had at least five months of parachute experience.

#39 – 30. Moments in the History of Space Travel

#39. June 18, 1983 – Sally Ride becomes first American woman in space. Interestingly, Ride’s flight was almost 20 years to the day of the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova.

#38. July 15, 1972 – NASA and Pioneer 10 have the first mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave the inner Solar System.

#37. August 6, 2012 – During the biggest space mission in the social media era, the Mars rover, Curiosity, survived the “Seven Minutes of Terror” as it entered the Martian air.

#36. May 14, 1973 – Skylab I, first U.S. orbiting laboratory, launches. It stayed in low Earth orbit for six years.

#35. April 19, 1971 – Russia launches the first space station, Salyut. The space station orbited the earth around 3,000 times for 175 days before it intentionally crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

#34. June 20 1944 – V-2 Rocket becomes the first man-made object to cross what would later be defined as the Kármán line and hence first flight into space in history.

#33. October 24, 1946 – First pictures of Earth from 105 km (65 mi). A 35 mm camera on a V-2 rocket from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico took the black and white photos.

#32. November, 20 1998 – The International Space Station (ISS) opens. A Russian section sent from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan is linked up with an American section.

#31. October 29, 1998 – Glenn, now 77, returns to space aboard shuttle Discovery, becoming the oldest person ever to fly in space.

#30. September 26, 1996 – Shannon Lucid returns to Earth after 188-day Mir mission, a U.S. space length record and a world record for women.

#29 – 20. Moments in the History of Space Travel

#29. April 25, 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope goes into Earth orbit, starting a revolution in space observation.

#28. February 7, 1984 – ‘Free-flying’ in space Bruce McCandless became the first person to do a spacewalk without being attached to the spacecraft.

#27. March 18, 1965 – First-ever spacewalk by Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov.

#26. February 20, 1947 – First animals in space (fruit flies). The purpose of the experiment was to explore the effects of radiation exposure at high altitudes. Scientists recovered the fruit flies alive.

#25. September 5, 1977 – Voyager I launches. It is the farthest man made object from Earth.

#24. January 28, 1986 – Challenger shuttle explodes 73 seconds after launch, killing its crew of seven.

#23. 1999-2006 – Stardust comet sample is returned.

#22. November 11, 1935 – The Explorer II balloon takes two people to 22,066 metres (72,395 ft), where they observe and photograph the curvature of the Earth.

#21. June 21, 2004 – First manned private flight, SpaceShipOne, takes place.

#20. July 14, 2015 – NASA’s New Horizons gave Pluto its first close-up. The spacecraft flew within 7,800 miles (12,550 kilometers) of Pluto’s surface. It captured great images of towering water-ice mountains and flowing fields of nitrogen glaciers, among other features.

#19 – 10. Moments in the History of Space Travel

#19. December 15, 1970 – The USSR and Venera 7 make the first soft landing on another planet (Venus).

#18. February 3, 1966 – USSR Luna 9 makes the first soft landing on the Moon.

#17. January 7, 1610 – Galileo Galilei discovers Jupiter’s moons, lunar craters and the phases of Venus.

#16. May 5, 1961 – U.S. launches first American astronaut, Alan Shepard Jr., into space, on a 15-minute, 22-second suborbital flight.

#15. October 15-16, 2003 – China joined Russia and United States in that small club of nations to have sent people into space. Taikonaut Yang Liwei completed 14 orbits of the Earth in Shenzou V.

#14. August 30, 1983 – Guion “Guy” Bluford becomes the first African-American to go into space.

#13. 1995 – The first discovery of planets outside our solar system.

#12. December 21, 2015 – SpaceX brought the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back for a soft touchdown during a mission that lofted 11 satellites to Earth orbit.

#11. December 7-19, 1972 – Apollo 17 mission that includes the longest and last stay of man on the moon (74 hours, 59 minutes) by astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt.

#10. Feb. 17, 1996 – The NEAR-Shoemaker NASA mission was the first ever to feature a spacecraft designed to orbit an asteroid. NEAR entered into Eros’ orbit on Valentine’s Day 2000.

#9 – 1. Moments in the History of Space Travel

#9. December 21, 1988 – Cosmonauts Vladimir Titov and Musa Manarov return to Earth from Soviet space station Mir after man’s longest space flight (at the time) – 365 days, 22 hours, 39 minutes.

#8. April 17, 1976 – The USA and West Germany perform the closest flyby of the Sun (43.432 million km) with Helios 2.

#7. August 10, 2015 – The USA and Japan grow lettuce on the International Space Station (ISS). It is the first space grown food.

#6. April 12, 1961 – The Russian, Yuri Gagarin, becomes the first man in space.

#5. June 13, 2010 – The Japanese space agency, JAXA, with their Hayabusa, returns the first sample from an asteroid (25143 Itokawa) to Earth.

#4. July 4, 1997 – NASA’s Mars Pathfinder is the first working rover on another planet (Mars).

#3. December 7, 1995 – NASA’s Galileo entry probe makes the first mission into the atmosphere of a gas giant (Jupiter).

#2. March 22, 1995 – Russia’s Valeria Polyakov records the longest duration spaceflight (437.7 days) aboard the Mir space station.

#1. July 20, 1969 – NASA and Apollo 11 become the first to put Man on the Moon. Neil Armstrong becomes the first man in history to walk on the moon.