By: Will Humphrey

* 1900-Konstantine E. Tsiolkovsky used mathematics and physics to study the way rockets worked. This was called rocket dynamics.

* July 7,1914-Dr. Robert Goddard got two patents that involved rockets one was a rocket liquid fuel, the other one was for a two or three staged rocket fuel.

* March 16,1926-Goddard tested and successfully launched the first rocket using liquid fuel which was a big accomplishment.

* 1933 – During World War 2, Germany launched the V-2 missals at London. The V-2 missals were created by Wernher Von Braun, who was an engineer.

* Octber 4, 1957 – The Sputnik marked the space race. While this marked a new space age, Sputnik only weighed 183 pounds and it was the size of a beach ball.

* April 12, 1961 – On this day a huge breakthrough happened. Russian astronaut, Yuri Gagann entered space and became the first man to ever enter space.

* May 5, 1961 – Astronauts, John Glenn, Virgil Grissom and Alan Sheppard Jr. flew this craft. It resulted in six flights.

* May 4, 1967 – The Lunar Orbitors were all launched so we can understand the moon’s surface better.

* July 20, 1969 – Neil Armstrong was the commander of Apollo II which was the first attempt to land a manned vehicle on the moon. He was the first person to touch the surface of the moon.

* April 19, 1971 – At launch it was announced that the purpose of the Salyut was to test systems of the space station and do experiments and research.

* May 8, 1971 – Mariner 9 was supposed to have a partner, Mariner 8, but that broke down. Mariner 9 weighted more than Mariner 6 and 7 combined. It got to Mars on November 14, By the end of 349 days of space travel, Mariner 9 had taken 7,329 pictures.

* April 16, 1972 – Apollo 16 was supposed to do the same thing that Apollo 15 did. It was supposed to gather more information about the moon’s surface. Apollo 16 also took pictures of the Earth with impressive cameras.

* May 14, 1973 – The skylab was an engineering laboratory and was launched by the Saturn V rocket. Three men went on this mission lasting 28, 59 and 84 days.

* July 20, 1976 – Their equipment examined the surface, soil and weather patterns of Mars.

* 1979-Skylab shoes images of the suns corona.

* April 12, 1981 – A Columbia vessel flew into the sky as the nation’s first reusable space shuttle.

* April 4, 1983 – This was the first launch of nine. It took pictures in space and ended our nine years of not walking in space. The shuttle eventually fell apart during take off on it’s tenth launch, which killed all the astronauts on board, January 28, 1986.

* February 20, 1986 – Was a huge breakthrough and was one of Russia’s biggest accomplishments in space. It was in space for fifteen years. This was three times longer than originally planned.

* September 9, 1995 – Viking was launched to support the IGY effort. It eventually got 159 miles above the Earth.

* December 7, 1995 – Galileo was really launched in It delivered a probe that went into Jupiter’s atmospehere.

* July 4, 1997 – The Mars Pathfinder was designed to land the rover on Mars but did more than that. When they looked at it when it landed back on Earth, on September 27, 1997, it was discovered that 2.3 billion bits of information was gathered by the Pathfinder.

* April 24, The first major opitcal telescope to be launched in space and has done it’s job for over twenty years.

* November 20, 1998 – International space station got two modules launched and they joined together in orbit.

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