History of Spaceflight

From Sputnik to Apollo: the first two decades of the space age.

Black-and-white photo of the Apollo 11 Saturn V rocket in flight, trailing a long exhaust plume. — Saturn Apollo Program. Credit: NASA. Source, NASA media guidelines.

The space age began in the middle of the Cold War, when the Soviet Union and the United States competed to show their technological strength. The competition became known as the space race.

Milestones

4 October 1957: Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
31 January 1958: Explorer 1, the first American satellite.
12 April 1961: Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space.
18 March 1965: Alexei Leonov makes the first spacewalk.
20 July 1969: Apollo 11 lands on the Moon.
19 April 1971: Salyut 1, the first space station.

The image above shows the Saturn V rocket of Apollo 11 shortly after launch on 16 July 1969. Read more on the pages Sputnik and the Space Race and Apollo Program.