User:Amrad
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
[edit]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) | ![]() |
V2 rocket, military program |
1946 | First pictures of earth from 100 km [1][2] | ![]() |
V2 |
1947 | First animals in space (fruit flies)[3][4] | ![]() |
V2 |
1957 | First artificial satellite | ![]() |
Sputnik 1 |
1957 | First signals from space | ![]() |
Sputnik 1 |
1957 | First animal in orbit, the dog Laika | ![]() |
Sputnik 2 |
1959 | First vehicle reaching Earth escape velocity | ![]() |
Luna 1 |
1959 | First man-made object in heliocentric orbit | ![]() |
Luna 1 |
1959 | First hard landing on another celestial body (the Moon) | ![]() |
Luna 2 |
1959 | First photos of far side of the Moon | ![]() |
Luna 3 |
1960 | First satellite recovered intact from orbit | ![]() |
Discoverer 13 |
1961 | First manned spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin) | ![]() |
Vostok 1 |
1961 | First manned orbital flight | ![]() |
Vostok 1 |
1962 | First planetary flyby (Venus closest approach 34,773 kilometers) | ![]() |
Mariner 2 |
1965 | First extra-vehicular activity | ![]() |
Voskhod 2 |
1965 | First Mars flyby (closest approach 9,846 kilometers) | ![]() |
Mariner 4 |
1966 | First soft landing on another celestial body (the Moon) | ![]() |
Luna 9 |
1966 | First photos from another celestial body (the Moon) | ![]() |
Luna 9 |
1966 | First hard landing on another planet (Venus) | ![]() |
Venera 3 |
1966 | First orbital rendezvous (docking) | ![]() |
Gemini 8/Agena target vehicle |
1966 | First artificial satellite around another celestial body (the Moon) | ![]() |
Luna 10 |
1967 | First unmanned rendezvous with docking | ![]() |
Cosmos 186/Cosmos 188 |
1968 | First human orbiting of another celestial body (Moon) | ![]() |
Apollo 8 |
1969 | First manned docking and exchange of crew | ![]() |
Soyuz 4/Soyuz 5 |
1969 | First human on another celestial body (the Moon) | ![]() |
Apollo 11 |
1969 | First space launch from another celestial body (the Moon) | ![]() |
Apollo 11 |
1970 | First automatic sample return from the Moon | ![]() |
Luna 16 |
1970 | First lunar rover | ![]() |
Lunokhod 1 |
1970 | First soft landing on another planet (Venus) | ![]() |
Venera 7 |
1970 | First signals from another planet (Venus) | ![]() |
Venera 7 |
1971 | First space station | ![]() |
Salyut 1 |
1971 | First orbit around another planet (Mars) | ![]() |
Mariner 9 |
1971 | First hard landing on Mars | ![]() |
Mars 2 |
1971 | First soft Mars landing | ![]() |
Mars 3 |
1972 | First human made object sent on escape trajectory away from the Sun | ![]() |
Pioneer 10 |
1973 | First Jupiter flyby (at 130,000 km) | ![]() |
Pioneer 10 |
1974 | First Mercury flyby at 703 kilometers | ![]() |
Mariner 10 |
1975 | First multinational manned mission | ![]() ![]() |
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project |
1975 | First orbit around Venus | ![]() |
Venera 9 |
1975 | First photos from the surface of another planet (Venus) | ![]() |
Venera 9 |
1976 | First photos and soil samples from the surface of Mars | ![]() |
Viking Lander |
1979 | First Saturn flyby at 21,000 km | ![]() |
Pioneer 11 |
1981 | First Reusable manned spacecraft (orbital) | ![]() |
Columbia |
1982 | First Venus soil samples | ![]() |
Venera 13 |
1982 | First sound recording of another celestial body (Venus) | ![]() |
Venera 13 |
1983 | First spacecraft beyond the orbit of Neptune (first spacecraft to pass beyond all Solar System planets) | ![]() |
Pioneer 10 |
1986 | First Uranus flyby (closest approach 81,500 kilometers) | ![]() |
Voyager 2 |
1986 | First consistently inhabited long-term research space station | ![]() |
Mir |
1989 | First Neptune flyby | ![]() |
Voyager 2 |
1991 | First asteroid flyby (951 Gaspra closest approach 1,600 kilometers) | ![]() |
Galileo |
1995 | First orbit of Jupiter | ![]() |
Galileo |
1995 | First mission into the atmosphere of a gas giant (Jupiter) | ![]() |
Galileo's atmospheric entry probe |
2000 | First orbiting of an asteroid (433 Eros) | ![]() |
NEAR Shoemaker |
2001 | First landing on an asteroid (433 Eros) | ![]() |
NEAR Shoemaker |
2004 | First orbit of Saturn | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Cassini–Huygens |
2005 | First soft landing on Titan | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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
[edit]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 | ![]() |
|
1946 | First space research flight (cosmic radiation experiments) | ![]() |
captured and improved V2 rocket |
1958 | Confirmed the existence of the Van Allen belts | ![]() |
Explorer 1 |
1958 | First solar powered satellite | ![]() |
Vanguard 1 |
1959 | First firing of a rocket in Earth orbit | ![]() |
Luna 1 |
1959 | First detection of solar wind | ![]() |
Luna 1 |
1961 | First launch from orbit | ![]() |
Venera 1 |
1961 | First mid-course corrections | ![]() |
Venera 1 |
1961 | First spin-stabilisation | ![]() |
Venera 1 |
1963 | First reusable manned spacecraft (suborbital) | ![]() |
X-15 Flight 90 |
1970 | First X-ray orbital observatory | ![]() |
Uhuru (satellite) |
1974 | First gravitational assist manoeuvre | ![]() |
Mariner 10 |
1978 | First real time remotely operated ultraviolet orbital observatory | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
International Ultraviolet Explorer |
1983 | Infrared orbital observatory | ![]() ![]() ![]() |
IRAS |
1983 | Ultraviolet orbital observatory | ![]() ![]() |
Astron |
1989 | Ultraviolet to gamma ray spectrum orbital observatory | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Granat |
1990 | Optical orbital observatory | ![]() ![]() |
Hubble Space Telescope |
1998 | First submarine-launched spacecraft | ![]() |
K-407 |
My edits
[edit]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.