Spaceflight

A V-2 /A4-rocket became the first man-made object to reach space on June 20, 1944. Launched at Peenemünde, Germany, it reached an altitude of 189 km (117 miles).

The first living beings to venture into space were fruit flies, which were launched aboard a suborbital V-2 rocket flight by the United States on February 20, 1947. The flies were successfully recovered alive.

Albert II, a male rhesus macaque monkey, made history as the first primate and mammal to journey into space. On June 14, 1949, he embarked on his emission from Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, United States. Accompanied by a U.S. V-2 sounding rocket, Albert soared to an altitude of 83 miles (134 km). However, tragedy struck upon re-entry when a parachute failure caused Albert's capsule to collide with the ground at high velocity, resulting in his demise. Nonetheless, valuable data on Albert's respiratory and cardiovascular functions were collected until the fateful impact.

The Alamogordo Guided Missile Test Base, in collaboration with Holloman Air Force Base, coordinated Albert II's groundbreaking flight. This endeavor followed the unfortunate loss of Albert I, who tragically perished prior to a planned mesospheric flight reaching a height of 39 miles (63 km) aboard a V-2 rocket on June 11, 1948. Lessons learned from Albert I's experience prompted the redesign of the capsule, addressing the cramped conditions that had affected his ill-fated journey.

The Soviet space program launched the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957. Sputnik 1 was a small, spherical spacecraft that orbited the Earth. Its successful launch marked the beginning of the Space Age and represented a major scientific and technological achievement for the Soviet Union. 

Laika, the dog was the first living creature to orbit the earth when he occupied the Soviet satellite, Sputnik 2. Laika died when Sputnik's air supply ran out; no provision had been made for recovering the craft.

Miss Able and Miss Baker, two rhesus monkeys, were part of a historic space mission conducted by NASA in 1959. They were the first animals to survive a space mission and return safely to Earth. The mission, known as "Jupiter AM-18," was launched on May 28, 1959, from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The spacecraft carrying Miss Able and Miss Baker was a Jupiter IRBM (Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile) modified to serve as a test vehicle for NASA's space program. The monkeys were placed in a specially designed capsule located at the top of the rocket. The mission aimed to study the effects of space travel on living organisms and gather valuable data to prepare for human spaceflight.

After reaching an altitude of approximately 300 miles (482 kilometers), the spacecraft returned to Earth and safely landed in the Atlantic Ocean. A recovery team retrieved the capsule and its precious passengers. Miss Able, the older of the two monkeys, unfortunately died a few days after the mission due to an anaesthetic overdose during a post-flight medical procedure. However, Miss Baker, the younger monkey, survived and lived for several more years, becoming a celebrity in her own right.

The successful return of Miss Able and Miss Baker marked a significant milestone in space exploration, demonstrating that living beings could withstand the physical stresses of space travel and return safely. 

A new federal non-military space agency The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958. it was signed into law, in response to the Soviet space program's launch of the world's first artificial satellite.

Major Yuri Gagarin became the first man to travel in space on April 12, 1961. He was 27 when he made a 108-minute orbital flight in his Vostok 1 spacecraft.

Vostok I capsule on display at the RKK Energiya museum. By SiefkinDR 

A chimpanzee named Ham became the first great ape sent into space on January 31, 1961. Ham traveled 158 miles above the Earth in the Mercury-Redstone-2 space capsule.

John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth when he traveled around the planet three times in the Mercury spacecraft Friendship 7 in 1962.

The Soviet Voskhod 1 mission in 1964 was the first multi-person space flight as well as the first without spacesuits.

The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 1 crashed in Siberia during its return to Earth in 1967, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov. He was the first human to die during a spaceflight.

The crew of Apollo 10 (Thomas Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan) reached a speed of 39,897 km/h in May 1969, the fastest ever attained by humans.

In April 1970, the crew of NASA's Apollo 13 mission (James Lovell, Fred Haise and John Swigert) swung around the far side of the moon putting them 248,655 miles (400,171 km) away from Earth. This is the furthest that humans have ever been from their home planet.

The crew of Apollo 13 photographed the Moon as they passed by it.

Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully landed on Venus in 1970. It was the first successful soft landing on another planet and the first spacecraft to successfully transmit data from the surface of another planet.

In 1971 The Soviet Soyuz 11 spacecraft suffered an uncontrolled decompression during re-entry, killing cosmonauts Vladislav Volkov, Georgiy Dobrovolskiy and Viktor Patsayev—the only human deaths to occur in space.

Launched in 1972, Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and to make up-close observations of Jupiter, capturing images that were later sent back to Earth. It passed the orbit of Neptune, the furthest planet from the Sun at the time, on June 13, 1983 becoming the first man-made object to leave the central Solar System.

The Voyager engineers calculated over 10,000 launch windows so that encounters between the craft and the planets on its trajectory didn't happen during Thanksgiving or Christmas, allowing them to stay home for the holidays.

Artist's conception of the Pioneer 10 spacecraft

Russian Valeri Polyakov left Earth on the January 8, 1994 Soyuz TM -18 flight, to be a doctor-cosmonaut on the Mir space station. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, setting a record 437 day long spaceflight.

NASA lost a $125M Mars orbiter in 1999 due to confusion in working with both imperial and metric systems. The mistake occurred because Lockheed Martin engineers used English (inch, ft) measurements in their calculations in contrast to NASA’s metric (cm, m) calculations.

NASA's robotic space probe Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause on August 25, 2012, making it the first spacecraft to do so. The heliopause is the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space. It is where the solar wind, the stream of charged particles from the Sun, meets the interstellar medium, the gas and dust between stars.

The NASA space probe New Horizons flew by the trans-Neptunian object Arrokoth on January 1, 2019, making it the farthest object visited by a spacecraft.

Wait Calculation is a dilemma stating that during an interstellar mission, humanity would easily find ways to increase travel speed greatly, meaning any new expeditions would arrive much earlier. Therefore, no-one would risk wasting their lives on such a meaningless trip.