Date |
Event |
Spacecraft |
Countries |
Oct. 4, 1957 |
The first artificial Earth satellite |
Sputnik 1 |
U.S.S.R. |
Nov. 3, 1957 |
Laika, the first animal launched into space |
Sputnik 2 |
U.S.S.R. |
Sept. 14, 1959 |
The first spacecraft to hard land on the Moon |
Luna 2 |
U.S.S.R. |
Oct. 7, 1959 |
The first pictures of the far side of the Moon |
Luna 3 |
U.S.S.R. |
April 1, 1960 |
The first applications satellite launched |
TIROS 1 (weather observation) |
U.S. |
Aug. 11, 1960 |
The first recovery of a payload from Earth orbit |
Discoverer 13 (part of the Corona reconnaissance satellite program) |
U.S. |
April 12, 1961 |
Yuri Gagarin - the first human to orbit Earth |
 Vostok 1 |
U.S.S.R. |
Dec. 14, 1962 |
The first data returned from another planet |
Mariner 2 |
U.S. |
June 16, 1963 |
Valentina Tereshkova - The first woman in space |
Vostok 6 |
U.S.S.R. |
July 26, 1963 |
The first satellite to operate in geostationary orbit |
Syncom 2 (telecommunications satellite) |
U.S. |
March 18, 1965 |
Human’s first spacewalk, by Soviet cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov |
 Voskhod 2 |
U.S.S.R. |
July 14, 1965 |
The first spacecraft pictures of Mars |
Mariner 4 |
U.S. |
Feb. 3, 1966 |
The first spacecraft to soft-land on the Moon |
Luna 9 |
U.S.S.R. |
April 24, 1967 |
Vladimir Komarov - the first death during a space mission |
Soyuz 1 |
U.S.S.R. |
Dec. 24, 1968 |
Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders – the first humans to orbit the Moon |
Apollo 8 |
U.S. |
July 20, 1969 |
Neil Armstrong – the first human to walk on the Moon |
 Apollo 11 |
U.S. |
Sept. 24, 1970 |
The first return of lunar samples by an unmanned spacecraft |
Luna 16 |
U.S.S.R. |
Dec. 15, 1970 |
The first soft landing on another planet (Venus) |
Venera 7 |
U.S.S.R. |
April 19, 1971 |
The first space station launched |
Salyut 1 |
U.S.S.R. |
Nov. 13, 1971 |
The first spacecraft to orbit another planet (Mars) |
Mariner 9 |
U.S. |
Dec. 2, 1971 |
The first spacecraft to soft-land on Mars |
Mars 3 |
U.S.S.R. |
Dec. 3, 1973 |
The first spacecraft to fly by Jupiter |
Pioneer 10 |
U.S. |
July 17, 1975 |
The first international docking in space |
Apollo and Soyuz spacecraft during the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project |
U.S., U.S.S.R. |
July 20, 1976 |
The first pictures transmitted from the surface of Mars |
Viking 1 |
U.S. |
Sept. 1, 1979 |
first spacecraft to fly by Saturn |
Pioneer 11 |
U.S. |
April 12–14, 1981 |
The first reusable spacecraft launched and returned from space |
space shuttle Columbia |
U.S. |
Jan. 24, 1986 |
The first spacecraft to fly by Uranus |
Voyager 2 |
U.S. |
March 13, 1986 |
The first spacecraft to make a close flyby of a comet nucleus |
Giotto at Halley's Comet |
European Space Agency |
Aug. 24, 1989 |
The first spacecraft to fly by Neptune |
Voyager 2 |
U.S. |
April 25, 1990 |
The first large optical space telescope was launched |
Hubble Space Telescope |
U.S., European Space Agency |
Dec. 7, 1995 |
The first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter |
Galileo |
U.S. |
Nov. 2, 2000 |
The first resident crew to occupy the International Space Station |
William Shepherd, Yury Gidzenko, and Sergey Krikalyov |
U.S., Russia |
Feb. 14, 2000;Â
Feb. 12, 2001Â |
The first spacecraft to orbit (2000) and land on (2001) an asteroid |
NEAR at the asteroid Eros |
U.S. |
June 21, 2004 |
The first privately funded manned spacecraft to achieve suborbital flight above 100 km (62 miles) |
Mike Melvill on SpaceShipOne |
Mojave Aerospace Ventures (commercial joint venture) |
July 1, 2004 |
The first spacecraft to orbit Saturn |
Cassini-Huygens |
U.S., European Space Agency, Italy |
Jan. 14, 2005 |
The first spacecraft to land on the moon of a planet other than Earth (Saturn's moon Titan) |
Huygens probe of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft |
U.S., European Space Agency, Italy |
June 13, 2010 |
The first spacecraft to return to Earth with samples from an asteroid |
Hayabusa |
Japan |
March 17, 2011 |
The first spacecraft to orbit Mercury |
Messenger |
U.S. |
August 6, 2014 |
The first spacecraft to orbit a comet |
Rosetta |
European Space Agency |
November 12, 2014 |
The first spacecraft to land on a comet |
Philae |
European Space Agency |
March 6, 2015 |
The first spacecraft to orbit a dwarf planet (Ceres) |
Dawn |
U.S. |
July 14, 2015 |
The first spacecraft to fly by Pluto |
New Horizons |
U.S. |
December 21, 2015 |
The first rocket stage to return to its launch site |
Falcon 9 |
U.S. |
January 1, 2019 |
The farthest object (2014 MU69) explored by a spacecraft |
New Horizons |
U.S. |
January 3, 2019 |
The first landing on the Moon's far side |
Chang'e 4 |
China |
August 23, 2023 |
The first landing of spacecraft on the Moon’s South Pole |
Chandrayaan-3 |
India |