This Day in Space

New Horizons flew past Arrokoth (Ultima Thule), the most distant object ever visited

Space Shuttle Challenger disaster — 7 crew members lost 73 seconds after launch

Space Shuttle Columbia broke apart during reentry — 7 crew members lost

SpaceX launched Falcon Heavy for the first time, sending a Tesla Roadster toward Mars orbit

Voyager 1 took the "Pale Blue Dot" photo of Earth from 6 billion km away

John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth aboard Friendship 7

Pioneer 10 launched — first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt and reach Jupiter

SpaceX Starship completed first full orbital flight with successful booster catch

Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk, spending 12 minutes outside Voskhod 2

Rocket Lab successfully recovered an Electron booster with a helicopter mid-air catch

Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space aboard Vostok 1

Space Shuttle Columbia launched on STS-1, the first shuttle mission

Hubble Space Telescope launched aboard Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31)

Alan Shepard became the first American in space on a suborbital Mercury flight

President Kennedy announced the goal to land on the Moon before the decade ended

Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space aboard Vostok 6

Sally Ride became the first American woman in space on STS-7

Mars Pathfinder landed on Mars, deploying the Sojourner rover

Apollo 11 launched from Kennedy Space Center, beginning the first Moon landing mission

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon

NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars using the revolutionary sky crane method

Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Neptune, the last planet visited by Voyager

Mae Jemison became the first African American woman in space on STS-47

Sputnik 1 launched — the first artificial satellite, marking the start of the Space Age

Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the X-1 rocket plane

Laika the dog became the first animal in orbit aboard Sputnik 2

The first module of the International Space Station (Zarya) launched on a Proton rocket

Apollo 17 astronauts left the Moon — the last humans to walk on the lunar surface (to date)

Apollo 8 launched, becoming the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon

James Webb Space Telescope launched on Ariane 5 from French Guiana