Space History News

On September 12, 1992, Mae Jemison became the first African American woman to travel to space aboard the Space Shuttle Endeavour on mission STS-47. A trained en

On September 11, 1985, the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) made history as the first spacecraft to fly by a comet, Giacobini-Zinner, a mission that was a

On September 6, 1947, the US Navy launched the first V-2 rocket from an aircraft carrier, the USS Midway, as part of "Operation Sandy," marking the first ballis

On September 3, 2006, the European Space Agency's SMART-1 spacecraft intentionally crashed into the moon after completing its mission to test solar electric pro

On September 1, 1979, NASA's Pioneer 11 became the first spacecraft to visit Saturn, after launching in 1973 to explore the asteroid belt and Jupiter. The probe

On August 18, 1868, French astronomer Pierre Jules César Janssen discovered helium while observing a total solar eclipse in India, noticing a bright yellow line

European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot is set to make history today by becoming the first French woman to conduct a spacewalk, alongside NASA astronaut A

In 1968, two Central Asian tortoises orbited the Moon aboard the Soviet Zond 5 spacecraft and returned safely, demonstrating the viability of life in space and

On August 11, 1960, the Discoverer 13 satellite achieved the first successful recovery of a human-made object from Earth's orbit, a significant milestone for th

On August 10, 1972, a large Earth-grazing fireball, later named the "Great Daylight Fireball," passed through the sky over North America, entering over Utah and

On August 9, 1976, the Soviet space program launched Luna 24, its final moon mission, which successfully returned 6 ounces of lunar soil samples to Earth. This

On August 8, 1977, the Soviet Union's Salyut 5 reconnaissance space station, part of the Almaz military program, burned up in Earth's atmosphere after being deo

On August 5, 2011, NASA launched the Juno spacecraft to study Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. Since arriving in 2016, Juno has provided detaile

On August 2, 1971, Apollo 15 made history with the first-ever televised liftoff from the moon, captured by a camera on the lunar rover as astronauts David Scott

On July 30, 1610, Galileo Galilei became the first person to observe rings around the planet Saturn using a newly invented telescope. Initially, he mistook them

On July 29, 1982, the Soviet Salyut 6 space station re-entered Earth's atmosphere and burned up, marking the end of its nearly five-year mission. Salyut 6 was n

On July 27, 1962, two Russian cosmonauts, Andriyan Nikolayev and Pavel Popovich, conducted the first zero-gravity training flight on a modified Soviet Tupolev T

Laika, a stray dog from Moscow, became the first animal to orbit Earth aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957, a mission designed without a return system. Although Soviet off