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Albert 11
Albert II was preceded by Albert, whose capsule only made it to a height of 39 miles on June 11, 1948. Albert did not last long, and possibly suffocated even before his capsule left the ground. Space officially begins at 100 km above the surface of the Earth, and this height is called the Karman Line. After Albert II made it into space, a number of other monkeys, named Albert III, IV, and V all flew aboard rockets, though none survived the flight, either dying on impact or during the flight. -
sputnik 1
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial Earth satellite. The Soviet Union launched it into an elliptical low Earth orbit on 4 October 1957. It was a 58 cm diameter polished metal sphere, with four external radio antennas to broadcast radio pulses. -
sputnik 2
Sputnik 2, or Prosteyshiy Sputnik 2 was the second spacecraft launched into Earth orbit, on 3 November 1957, and the first to carry a living animal, a Soviet space dog named Laika, who died a few hours after the launch. -
Yuri Gagarin
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin was a Russian Soviet pilot and cosmonaut. He was the first human to journey into outer space, when his Vostok spacecraft completed an orbit of the Earth on 12 April 1961. -
Apollo 11
Apollo 11 was the spaceflight that landed the first two humans on the Moon. Mission commander Neil Armstrong and pilot Buzz Aldrin, both American, landed the lunar module Eagle on July 20, 1969, at 20:18 UTC. -
pioneer 10
Pioneer 10 is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing 258 kilograms, that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, Pioneer 10 became the first spacecraft to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. -
viking 2
The Astrobiology Field Laboratory was a proposed NASA unmanned spacecraft that would have conducted a robotic search for life on Mars. -
space shuttle columbia
Space Shuttle Columbia was the first space-rated orbiter in NASA's Space Shuttle fleet. It launched for the first time on mission STS-1 on April 12, 1981, the first flight of the Space Shuttle program. -
sally ride challenger
This week in 1983, space shuttle Challenger and the STS-7 crew launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. With the launch, Mission Specialist Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space. The STS-7 crew, the first five-member crew, deployed two communications satellites and conducted experiments from the Shuttle Pallet Satellite. Ride, shown here floating in the Challenger flight deck, later described the launch as "exhilarating, terrifying and overwhelming all at the same time. -
space shuttle challenger
On January 28, 1986, the NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted. -
space shuttle columbia
On February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentering Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. -
mars phoenix
Phoenix was a robotic spacecraft on a space exploration mission on Mars under the Mars Scout Program. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008. -
messenger spacecraft
MESSENGER was a NASA robotic spacecraft that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015. The spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004 to study Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field.