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August 24, 1960: McDonnell Aircraft proposes a one-man space station using a Mercury spacecraft.

This proposal was one of the earliest civilian space station concepts and would have allowed a single astronaut to perform fourteen days’ worth of science, physiology, and space technology experiments, as well as weather observations and Earth-surface reconnaissance. The design consisted of a standard Mercury capsule mounted atop a laboratory (station) launched into space on an Atlas-Agena rocket. After two weeks, the station would be permanently abandoned in orbit, so in a sense the station was more of a mission module for long-duration Mercury missions rather than a space station in today’s connotation.

Read more about the one-man Mercury laboratory here! 

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August 21, 1965: Gemini 5 launches into space

Gemini 5, the third manned mission of the Gemini program, carried astronauts Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad into space. In addition to setting the world record for longest manned space mission (eight days), it was the first American mission to have a crew patch. Initially called the "Cooper patch" within NASA, this simple depiction of a Conestoga wagon began one of the most cherished traditions in the space industry.

Read more about some of NASA's most iconic crewed mission patches here!

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August 18, 1993: The Delta Clipper Experimental (DC-X) launches and lands for the first time.

The McDonnell Douglas DC-X was an uncrewed prototype of a reusable single-stage-to-orbit vertical take-off and landing launch vehicle developed in conjunction with the Department of Defense. The 40-foot-tall pyramid-shaped craft was built using commercial off-the-shelf parts and ran almost autonomously (former Apollo astronaut Pete Conrad was at the controls for some flights). Its successful test flight in August of 1993 made it the first rocket to land vertically on Earth, a feat now being done by SpaceX and Blue Origin every few weeks. 

Read more about the Delta Clipper vehicle here! 

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August 16, 1960: Joseph Kittinger set the decades-long world record for the longest free fall

The U.S. Air Force's Project Excelsior was a series of three high-altitude jumps that tested a new multi-stage parachute system. Meaning "ever upward", the project pioneered aviation safety and made breakthroughs in aerospace medicine that are still relevant more than sixty years later. Captain Joseph Kittinger set long-standing world records for the longest free-fall, the highest altitude jump, and the highest altitude traveled by a human in a balloon.

Read more about Project Excelsior here!

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August 12, 1977: Space Shuttle orbiter Enterprise undergoes its first free-flight test.

Astronauts Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton performed the first of five approach and landing tests of the orbiter at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The vehicle separated from the modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and glided safely to the dry lake bed, qualifying the technology needed to return from orbit. Enterprise, named after the starship Enterprise from the sci-fi TV series Star Trek, was never meant to fly in space but had an illustrious career on Earth, undergoing vibration tests at the Marshall Space Flight Center (AL), fit-checks for launch complexes at the Kennedy Space Center (FL) and Vandenberg Air Force Base (CA), and accident investigation following the Challenger and Columbia disasters before retiring on display at the Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.

Read more about Space Shuttle Enterprise here! 

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August 7, 1964: North American Aviation pilot Charles Hetzel performs the first manned flight of the Gemini Test Tow Vehicle (TTV). 

The TTV’s were the full-scale test articles that assessed the glide and landing capabilities of the Gemini Paraglider concept, a proposal to land Gemini spacecraft on a runway using a Rogallo paraglider wing and skids. The TTV’s were towed into the air by helicopter and glided to the ground once the towline was cut. Hetzel’s landing attempt of TTV-1 was not successful but resulted in developments that eventually made future Apollo astronaut Jack Swigert’s 1965 flight of TTV-3 successful.

Read more about Gemini Paraglider here! 

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July 22, 1951: Soviet space dogs Dezik and Tsygan become the first mammals to survive spaceflight

Two stray female dogs, Dezik and Tsygan, become the first dogs to fly in space onboard a Soviet R-1 rocket. The pair traveled to an altitude of 68 miles (110 kilometers) and were the first mammals successfully recovered from spaceflight. During the 1950s and ‘60s, the Soviet Union sent more than fifty dogs into space, some of which became the first living creatures to orbit planet Earth.

Read more about the Soviet space dogs here! 

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July 20, 1976: Viking 1 becomes the first American spacecraft to land on Mars.

The first of two Project Viking missions to Mars, Viking 1 landed on Chryse Planitia on the 15th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. During its six years of surface operations, the lander analyzed four samples of Martian regolith in search for organic compounds. The Viking 1 orbiter is best remembered for snapping a peculiar picture of Mount Cydonia, famously known today as the "Face on Mars".

Learn more about Project Viking here!

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July 17, 1962: First Lady Astronaut Trainees Jerrie Cobb (left) and Jane Hart (right) testify before a special Subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics for the inclusion of women in the manned space program. 

The First Lady Astronaut Trainees (FLATs), also known as the Mercury 13, was a privately-funded project that evaluated the fitness of women pilots for astronaut candidacy in the early 1960s. Despite public support, the group was not accepted by NASA but would influence the agency’s inclusion of women astronauts beginning in 1978.

Learn more about the FLATs here!

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July 14, 1965: NASA’s Mariner 4 spacecraft becomes the first man-made object to reach Mars

Mariner 4 launched in late November of 1964 and reached the red planet 228 days later, becoming the first artificial object in Martian space. During its flyby, it took 22 pictures of Mars’s surface before entering heliocentric orbit, where it still remains. 

A “real-time data translator” machine converted the digital images taken by the spacecraft into numbers printed on strips of paper. Too anxious to wait for the pictures to be processed, employees at JPL took the strips of paper and attached them up side-by-side to a display panel. They then proceeded to hand-color every segment of the picture: Each number represented a different color, similar to a paint-by-numbers picture. 

Learn more about the Mariner program here! 

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July 11, 1979: Skylab crashes into Australia

Skylab, the first American space station, supported three crewed missions from 1973 to 1974. In the event a crew’s spacecraft malfunctioned and they became stranded in orbit or on the station, a rescue mission would have been launched. There were also plans to construct a new and improved Skylab, Skylab B, for use with the upcoming Space Shuttle or possibly Soviet Soyuz spacecraft.

Read more about Skylab B and Skylab rescue here! 

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July 3, 1969: The second launch of the Soviet N1 moon rocket ends in disaster

N1 5L, the second flight of the Soviet Union’s lunar rocket, ended in total destruction of both the vehicle and its launch pad when 29 of the 30 NK-15 first stage engines shut down at T+10.5 seconds. The 2,000 tons of propellant in the rocket’s fuel tanks triggered a shock wave that shattered windows and sent debris flying across the Baikonur Cosmodrome. As a huge mushroom cloud turned night into day, Lt. Colonel Semen Komarovsky recalled, “Today…I saw without exaggeration the end of the world, and not in a nightmare but while fully awake standing right next to it.”

Read more about the N1 program here!

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June 2, 1957: Captain Joseph Kittinger performed the first flight of the USAF’s Project Manhigh.

Project Manhigh was a pre-Space Age series of manned balloon flights to the very edge of space. They are considered to be the first steps ever taken towards true manned spaceflight. The flights aimed to answer questions regarding the human body’s ability to survive and function in space, as well as what equipment would be necessary to send men into space in the future. Project Manhigh is also the precursor to NASA’s Project Mercury.

Learn more about Project Manhigh, its flights, and its accomplishments here!

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May 28, 1959: Female monkeys Able and Baker become the first primates to survive spaceflight.

A rhesus macaque named Able and a squirrel monkey named Baker launched on a suborbital flight aboard a Jupiter rocket. They were the first primates (and animals other than dogs) to survive spaceflight, but Able died a few days later during surgery. Baker spent the rest of her days at the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama where she entertained visitors and received more than a hundred fan letters a day. She died in 1987 and the age of 27, setting the record for the oldest squirrel monkey to ever live. 

Read more about Able, Baker, and other primates who flew in space here!

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April 12, 1961: “Poyekhali!” Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to fly in space onboard Vostok 1. 

The 27-year-old Soviet cosmonaut completed a single orbit around the Earth the morning of Wednesday, April 12— only 25 days before the first American crewed suborbital spaceflight. During descent, he ejected from his spacecraft and landed under his own parachute near the city of Engels. Ever since, there have been rumors and conspiracy theories that Gagarin was actually not the first person to fly in space, but rather the first to return. Though none of these stories about so-called “phantom cosmonauts” have any truthfulness, they are still an interesting piece of early space history.

Read more about phantom cosmonauts here! 

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March 13, 1855: Percival Lowell is born in Boston, Massachusetts

Lowell was an American businessman, author, and astronomer who built a private observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona (now known as the Lowell Observatory) in the early 1890′s. He predicted the existence of a planet beyond Neptune and initiated the search that would discover Pluto well after his death. Lowell is best known for this theory that an intelligent Martian race constructed a series of canals to irrigate water from Mars’s poles. What began as a mistranslation of an Italian word led to more than a century of searching for life beyond Earth. 

Read more about the Martian canals here! 

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March 9, 1961: Korabl-Sputnik 4 carries space dog Chernushka and space dummy Ivan Ivanovich on a single-orbit flight.

Ivan was an anthropomorphic test dummy, or lifelike mannequin used to test the ejection seat of the Vostok spacecraft before crewed flight. His body housed small rodents and a radio transmitter. Ivan flew with Chernushka on March 9th and again with the dog Zvezdochka on March 25 in the final test flight before Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight. Though the most famous, Ivan was only one of multiple “dummies” used in space exploration.

Read more about Ivan and the other space mannequins here!