spaceflight history

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, both the United States and the Soviet Union recognized that sending single spacecraft into orbit was only the beginning of what would become s...

The phrase first spacecraft most commonly refers to the first human-made object to achieve Earth orbit or, more broadly, to leave Earth’s atmosphere and enter space. In histor...

On July 20, 1969, a man landed on the Moon when Apollo 11’s Lunar Module Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility. Neil Armstrong became the first person to step onto the...

On July 21, 1961, Gus Grissom flew Mercury-Redstone 4 (MR-4) aboard Liberty Bell 7, a suborbital mission intended to expand the operational envelope of U.S. human spaceflight af...