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1300 BCE
Chinese Rockets
Rocket technology was developed in China during the Song dynasty. Rockets were powered by a black powder made of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur. At first, rockets were used only in fireworks. Later, the Chinese used them as weapons. They even developed a two-stage rocket for their armies. -
Advancment of Rocketry in Warfare.
Rockets were used as weapons of war in and Indian Revoultion, catching the eye of an artillery expert, Colonel William Congreve. He then paved the way for rocketry in the military forces. -
Calculator Invented
Calculator was invented to help math and make it a fast and easy way to solve math problems quick. -
Invention of Spin Stabilization
All over the world, researchers attempted to improve the accuracy of Rockets in warfare. An englishman named William Hale developed a technique called "spin stabilization". Exhaust gases struck small veins causing the rocket to spin like a bullet in flight. -
Nikolaus Otto
Before the beginning of WWI Nikolaus Otto invents the Combustion engine which uses combustible fuel. This leads to rockets first breaking the sound barrier. -
Russia establishes "Rocket Equation"
Russian Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky came up with the "Rocket Equation". The equation relates the rocket's speed with its mass, along with accounting for fuel consumption. -
Woman & People Of Color Enter Space Studies
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Dr. Evelyn Boyd Granville
Dr. Boyd worked on the Mercury mission developing software made for satellite analysis. She also worked on the Vanguard and Apollo missions. As well as working at NASA she worked as a professor and a strong advocate for STEM education. -
Mary Jackson
Mary Jackson was an American mathematician and aerospace engineer at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which in 1958 was succeeded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. She was the first black female engineer at NASA. -
Melba Roy Mouton
Melba Mouton helped to writing programing that computed trajectories and locations of aircraft. She also contributed to making echo satellites visible to people through element time tables. -
Sally Ride Joins Nasa
Sally Ride joined NASA as part of the 1978 astronaut class, the first to include women. She and five other women, along with 29 men, were selected out of 8,000 applicants. The class became known as the "Thirty-Five New Guys" and reported to the Johnson Space Center the next summer to begin training. -
1st American Woman in Space
Sally Ride's place in history was assured on June 18, 1983, when she rocketed into space on Challenger's STS-7 mission with four male crew mates becoming the 1st American woman to enter space. -
Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison was the first African American woman in space. In 1992, she rode Endeavor for the STS-47 mission Spacelab-J, a cooperative mission between the United States and Japan. -
Ellen Ochoa
Ellen Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman in space in 1993. She was a mission specialist aboard the STS-56 flight of Discovery, a nine-day mission that collected data about how the sun's energy affects the ozone layer. -
Peggy Whitson
Peggy Whitson was hired and selected by NASAs astronaught selection in 1996. Since she has spent more time in space than any other American or any other woman. She was the first woman to command the space station twice and the first woman and non-military head of NASA's astronaut office. -
Kalpana Chawla
was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space. She first flew on Space Shuttle Columbia in 1997 as a mission specialist and primary robotic arm operator aboard STS-87. She was one of the astronauts who would loose their life in the explosion of the Columbia in 2003. -
Period: to
Space Program Looses Funding And Budgets Are Tight
In this time gap NASA flew less and less missions. The reason was due to the government funding they receive annually. Private companies began to pop up and NASA started focusing more on R&D. -
Christina Koch
Christina Koch completed the longest single mission by a woman. On the 59th expedition to the International Space Station, Koch was in space for 328 days, starting in 2019 and ending in 2020. Koch and the Expedition-59 crew observed bioengineered devices, tested free-flying robotic assistants and set up external science facilities. -
Jessica Meir
In 2020, Meir and Koch completed the first all-female spacewalk. Her time on the International Space Station represents the most prolonged continuous female presence aboard the space station. NASA reports that she has spent 205 days in space, 3,280 orbits of Earth and a trip of 86.9 million miles.