TIMELINE

1895	Tsiolkovsky becomes the first engineer to come up with a rocket equation for escaping Earth’s gravity
1903	The Wright Brothers successfully create the first airplane
1926	Robert Goddard successfully launches the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket
1942	Wernher von Braun’s first successful test launch of the V-2 rocket in Germany
1945	The first atomic bomb—Trinity test site in Los Alamos, New Mexico
1945	WWII ends with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
1946	Von Braun begins working for the United States
1947	Hermes rocket flies wildly off course from the White Sands test site and lands in Mexico
1947	Chuck Yeager becomes the first pilot to reach Mach 1 and break the sound barrier in the X-1
1947	The Soviets launch their first V-2
1947	The Cold War begins
1949	The USSR tests its first nuclear weapon
1952	The United States detonates the first hydrogen bomb
1957	Sputnik is launched by the Soviets
1957	The Soviets put first dog into space
1957	TV-3 Vanguard rocket fails
1958	US launches its first satellite into orbit: Explorer 1
1958	NASA is signed into existence
1959	The Mercury astronauts are selected
1961	Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space, aboard Vostok 1
1961	Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space, aboard Freedom 7
1962	John Glenn makes three orbits around the Earth in Friendship 7
1965	The “corned beef sandwich incident” aboard Gemini 3
1966	Neil Armstrong’s successful rendezvous with the Agena during Gemini 8
1967	Apollo 1 tragedy
1967	Soyuz 1 tragedy
1967	Venera 4—Soviet probe reaches Venus
1968	Apollo 8 orbits the moon
1969	Apollo 11—Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin successfully land on the moon and return home safely to Earth
1970	Apollo 13—a successful failure
1972	Apollo 17—the last men on the moon
1972	NASA’s space shuttle program begins
1973	NASA’s first space station, Skylab, becomes operational
1973	NASA’s Mariner 10 probe flies past Venus and Mercury
1975	Apollo-Soyuz—the first US-Soviet joint mission