I really just made this login to have somewhere to put the following. Only after that did I discover that there already is a similar list towards the end of the space race article. Silly me. However, that list stops in 1975. Which makes sense, but makes the list incomplete. It is also interresting to compare the two lists.

Timeline of space exploration

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Because the timeline of space exploration article is clogged up by trivia that seem to be intended to hide the fact that the USSR won the space race in the 50s and 60s, I decided to make this into a more balanced list. Of course, I should do this in the article itself, but I foresee lengthy discussions (aka bickering) with little success. So instead I decided to put this list here for reference. Alas, I can't link to it from the article. :)

Ironically, only after the US and the USSR made serious cuts in their space programme bugets, thus effectively ending the space race, did the US start to seriously outperform the USSR, with the exploration of other planets.

The really big ones are in bold type.

For details on what I excluded, see below the tables.


This is a timeline of space exploration including notable achievements and first accomplishments in humanity's physical exploration of space.

Date Mission Achievements Country Mission name
1942 First rocket to reach 100km from the Earth's surface (boundary of space)  Germany V2 rocket, military program
1946 First pictures of earth from 100 km [1][2]   United States V2
1947 First animals in space (fruit flies)[3][4]   USA-ABMA V2
1957 First artificial satellite   USSR Sputnik 1
1957 First signals from space   USSR Sputnik 1
1957 First animal in orbit, the dog Laika   USSR Sputnik 2
1959 First vehicle reaching Earth escape velocity   USSR Luna 1
1959 First man-made object in heliocentric orbit   USSR Luna 1
1959 First hard landing on another celestial body (the Moon)   USSR Luna 2
1959 First photos of far side of the Moon   USSR Luna 3
1960 First satellite recovered intact from orbit   USA-Air Force Discoverer 13
1961 First manned spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin)   USSR Vostok 1
1961 First manned orbital flight   USSR Vostok 1
1962 First planetary flyby (Venus closest approach 34,773 kilometers)   USA-NASA Mariner 2
1965 First extra-vehicular activity   USSR Voskhod 2
1965 First Mars flyby (closest approach 9,846 kilometers)   USA-NASA Mariner 4
1966 First soft landing on another celestial body (the Moon)   USSR Luna 9
1966 First photos from another celestial body (the Moon)   USSR Luna 9
1966 First hard landing on another planet (Venus)   USSR Venera 3
1966 First orbital rendezvous (docking)   USA-NASA Gemini 8/Agena target vehicle
1966 First artificial satellite around another celestial body (the Moon)   USSR Luna 10
1967 First unmanned rendezvous with docking   USSR Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188
1968 First human orbiting of another celestial body (Moon)   USA-NASA Apollo 8
1969 First manned docking and exchange of crew   USSR Soyuz 4/Soyuz 5
1969 First human on another celestial body (the Moon)   USA-NASA Apollo 11
1969 First space launch from another celestial body (the Moon)   USA-NASA Apollo 11
1970 First automatic sample return from the Moon   USSR Luna 16
1970 First lunar rover   USSR Lunokhod 1
1970 First soft landing on another planet (Venus)   USSR Venera 7
1970 First signals from another planet (Venus)   USSR Venera 7
1971 First space station   USSR Salyut 1
1971 First orbit around another planet (Mars)   USA-NASA Mariner 9
1971 First hard landing on Mars   USSR Mars 2
1971 First soft Mars landing   USSR Mars 3
1972 First human made object sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun   USA-NASA Pioneer 10
1973 First Jupiter flyby (at 130,000 km)   USA-NASA Pioneer 10
1974 First Mercury flyby at 703 kilometers   USA-NASA Mariner 10
1975 First multinational manned mission   USSR   USA-NASA Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
1975 First orbit around Venus   USSR Venera 9
1975 First photos from the surface of another planet (Venus)   USSR Venera 9
1976 First photos and soil samples from the surface of Mars   USA-NASA Viking Lander
1979 First Saturn flyby at 21,000 km   USA-NASA Pioneer 11
1981 First Reusable manned spacecraft (orbital)   USA-NASA Columbia
1982 First Venus soil samples   USSR Venera 13
1982 First sound recording of another celestial body (Venus)   USSR Venera 13
1983 First spacecraft beyond the orbit of Neptune (first spacecraft to pass beyond all Solar System planets)   USA-NASA Pioneer 10
1986 First Uranus flyby (closest approach 81,500 kilometers)   USA-NASA Voyager 2
1986 First consistently inhabited long-term research space station   USSR Mir
1989 First Neptune flyby   USA-NASA Voyager 2
1991 First asteroid flyby (951 Gaspra closest approach 1,600 kilometers)   USA-NASA Galileo
1995 First orbit of Jupiter   USA-NASA Galileo
1995 First mission into the atmosphere of a gas giant (Jupiter)   USA-NASA Galileo's atmospheric entry probe
2000 First orbiting of an asteroid (433 Eros)   USA-NASA NEAR Shoemaker
2001 First landing on an asteroid (433 Eros)   USA-NASA NEAR Shoemaker
2004 First orbit of Saturn   USA-NASA   ESA   ASI Cassini–Huygens
2005 First soft landing on Titan   ESA   USA-NASA   ASI Cassini–Huygens

1Project Vanguard was transferred from the NRL to NASA in late 1958.

In addition, virtually all manned duration records have been set by the USSR, due largely to their Salyut and Mir series of space stations.

Scientific and Technological

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I deleted the following, because they don't really fit in this list, but deserve some mention anyway, so I made a separate list. For the scientific discoveries, some were side-effects, not intended purposes. And many technological achievements were not goals in themselves, but rather means to achieve those goals. Of course, some of this is somewhat arbitrary.

1926 Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid fueled rocket   United States
1946 First space research flight (cosmic radiation experiments)   United States captured and improved V2 rocket
1958 Confirmed the existence of the Van Allen belts   USA-ABMA Explorer 1
1958 First solar powered satellite   NRL Vanguard 1
1959 First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit   USSR Luna 1
1959 First detection of solar wind   USSR Luna 1
1961 First launch from orbit   USSR Venera 1
1961 First mid-course corrections   USSR Venera 1
1961 First spin-stabilisation   USSR Venera 1
1963 First reusable manned spacecraft (suborbital)   USA-NASA X-15 Flight 90
1970 First X-ray orbital observatory   USA-NASA Uhuru (satellite)
1974 First gravitational assist manoeuvre   USA-NASA Mariner 10
1978 First real time remotely operated ultraviolet orbital observatory   USA-NASA   ESA   UK-SERC International Ultraviolet Explorer
1983 Infrared orbital observatory   USA-NASA   UK-SERC   Netherlands-NIVR IRAS
1983 Ultraviolet orbital observatory   USSR   France Astron
1989 Ultraviolet to gamma ray spectrum orbital observatory   USSR   France   Denmark   Bulgaria Granat
1990 Optical orbital observatory   USA-NASA   ESA Hubble Space Telescope
1998 First submarine-launched spacecraft   Russia K-407

My edits

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First of all, I don't see the reason for splitting the list in different periods, so I put it into one single table.

I excluded stuff like (incomplete list):

  • Publication of books on how it could be done. What counts is what was done. This excludes most of the earliest entries.
  • 1935: a student starts work on a rocket. What counts is the successful launch of a rocket. Anyway, the great rocket scientists of the beginning of space exploration, Sergey Korolyov and Wernher von Braun, started building their rockets before that.
  • Formation of space agencies. Again, what counts is what they do, not when they were founded.
  • The first satellite for some specific purpose (weather, communication, spying). What counts is the first satellite. This excludes several US entries.
  • The second time something is done. It's the first time that counts. This excludes the second and third nation in space. Does it matter, really, which nation it was? That's about the space race, not space exploration.
    • Example: "1946: First U.S.-designed rocket to reach edge of space (80 km (49 mi))". It's not the first one to do that and it's not even a record (and it's not even the edge of space, which is, rather arbitrarily, set at 100 km up).
  • 1957: First intercontinental ballistic missile. This is about space exploration, not just any rockets.
  • 1959: First photograph of Earth from orbit. The first photo of Earth from space already preceded that, so it's basically more of the same.
  • 1962: First orbital solar observatory. Not sure if this should be included.
  • 1963: First woman in space. Why not also include the first black man in space?
  • 1964: First multi-man crew (three members)
  • 1965: First orbital rendezvous (parallel flight, no docking). It's the docking that counts.
  • 2 June 1966: soft landing on the Moon and photos from the Moon. Neither of these was done for the first time (which was earlier that year), so why was that in the list? Because it was done by the US?
  • 23 April 1967: First spaceflight casualty. No it wasn't. That was on Apollo 1, earlier that year. But we don't want the US to have set this record, now do we? :) Anyway, not really relevant for this list.
  • 1971: First signals from Mars. That was already covered by 'First signals from another planet (Venus)'.
  • 1971: First Manned orbital observatory.First space station already covers that.
  • 1972: First mission to enter the asteroid belt and leave inner solar system. The entry before that says 'First human made object sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun. Which comes down to the same thing. The first entry says it started doing something, so adding that it actually did that dies not add much.
  • 1972: First signals from Mars surface. hat is already covered by the first signals from another planet (Venus)
  • 1980: Saturn flyby. Not the first one. I even wonder if flyby's should be in the list. But the photographs taken by these missions are among the best things that came out of space exploration. In that sense, the USA is underrepresented in the latter part of the list.
  • 1992: First polar orbit around the Sun. Just a variation on the first man-made object in heliocentric orbit (1959).
  • 2001: First space tourist.

A note on one that I kept in the table:

  • 1947: First animals in space (fruit flies). I bet the first rocket in space had loads of microbes in it, so where does one draw the line? And probably even on it, so were those the first EVAs? :)

Noteworthy is that in the original list, when one vehicle did several firsts, this was split for US vehicles, but not for USSR vehicles. The big difference is of course that splitting results in more flags for that country.

I changed 'impact' to 'hard landing' because that is the more common terminology (at least in Dutch). Given all the other bias, I wonder if the terminology was chosen because all three were done by the USSR.

So I started from the existing list, excluding mostly (but by no means exclusively) pro-US stuff. Which makes sense, considering that most editors here will be from the US. What I don't know is if any Soviet achievements have been kept from this list. Alas, I can't read Russian, so that Wikipedia can't help me very much. If you see anything missing here, tell me. And maybe try to include it in the article itself.