| first |
spacecraft / individual |
date |
| artificial satellite |
Sputnik 1 |
Oct 4, 1957 |
| living creature in space |
dog Laika |
Nov 3, 1957 |
| American satellite |
Explorer 1 |
Feb 1, 1958 |
| recorded message from space |
SCORE |
Dec 18, 1958 |
| probe to reach escape velocity/lunar flyby |
Luna 1 |
Jan 2, 1959 |
| polar orbiting satellite |
Discoverer 1 |
Feb 28, 1959 |
| lunar impact |
Luna 2 |
Sep 12, 1959 |
| weather satellite |
Explorer 7 |
Oct 13, 1959 |
| active comsat |
Courier 1B |
Oct 4, 1960 |
| human in space |
Yuri Gagarin |
Apr 12, 1961 |
| satellite telephone call & TV broadcast |
Echo 1 |
Feb 24, 1962 |
| real-time active comsat |
Telstar 1 |
Jul 10, 1962 |
| successful planetary flyby (Venus) |
Mariner 2 |
Aug 27, 1962 |
| woman in space |
Valentina Tereshkova |
Jun 16, 1963 |
| geosynchronous satellite |
Syncom 2 |
Jul 26, 1963 |
| joint US/USSR space project |
Echo 2 |
Jan 25, 1964 |
| geostationary satellite |
Syncom 3 |
Aug 19, 1964 |
| commercial comsat |
Early Bird/Intelsat 1 |
Apr 6, 1965 |
| manned flight to leave Earth orbit |
Apollo 8 |
Dec 21, 1968 |
| human on the Moon |
Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11 |
Jul 21, 1969 |
| satellite repaired in orbit |
SMM (by Shuttle) |
Apr 6, 1984 |
| satellites brought back from space |
Shuttle mission STS-19 |
Nov 16, 1984 |
| ion-powered deep space probe |
Deep Space 1 |
Oct 24, 1998 |
