A short history of spaceflight

Sputnik and the first people in space

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, a metal ball about 23 inches wide that sent out simple radio beeps. It was the first human-made object to orbit Earth, and it started a rivalry with the United States known as the space race.

A month later Sputnik 2 carried the dog Laika. On April 12, 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin made one full orbit of Earth in Vostok 1, becoming the first person in space. Alan Shepard became the first American in space weeks later, and on June 16, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman, spending almost three days in orbit.

The race to the Moon

Both countries learned to do spacewalks, dock two spacecraft and stay up for days. Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk in 1965.

The United States then pulled ahead with Apollo. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon. Six missions landed by the end of 1972, and 12 astronauts walked on the surface. In 1975 the rivals met in orbit when an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz docked, a sign that competition could give way to cooperation.

Shuttles and space stations

The Soviet Union launched the first space station, Salyut 1, in 1971, and the US followed with Skylab in 1973. The Soviet Mir station, assembled from 1986, hosted crews for most of 15 years.

NASA's space shuttle first flew in 1981. It was a winged, partly reusable spacecraft that could carry seven people and large cargo, including the Hubble Space Telescope. Over 135 missions it helped build the International Space Station, but two accidents, Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003, killed 14 astronauts. The shuttle retired in 2011.

The ISS, built by five space agencies, has had people aboard continuously since November 2000. China launched its first astronaut in 2003 and now runs its own station, Tiangong.

Robotic explorers

Most of what we know about other worlds comes from spacecraft without crews. Probes have flown past every planet, landed on Venus, Mars and Titan, and touched asteroids and comets.

Highlights include the Voyager probes, now in interstellar space; rovers such as Curiosity and Perseverance on Mars; Cassini at Saturn; New Horizons at Pluto; and space telescopes such as Hubble and James Webb. India, Japan, China, the European Space Agency and others now run their own deep-space missions.

The commercial era

In the 2000s NASA began paying private companies to deliver cargo and later crews to the ISS. In May 2020 SpaceX's Crew Dragon carried two NASA astronauts to the station, the first crewed orbital launch from US soil since 2011. Reusable rocket boosters that land after launch have made access to space cheaper and more frequent.

Private companies also fly paying customers. Some trips are short suborbital hops that reach the edge of space for a few minutes of weightlessness; others, such as those arranged by Axiom Space, send crews to the ISS for about two weeks.

Türkiye in space

On January 18, 2024, Alper Gezeravcı, a Turkish Air Force pilot, launched aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon on the Axiom Mission 3, or Ax-3. He spent about two weeks on the ISS, running more than a dozen experiments prepared by Turkish universities and research institutions, and returned in early February 2024. He became Türkiye's first astronaut.

On June 8, 2024, Tuva Cihangir Atasever flew on Virgin Galactic's Galactic 07 suborbital flight from New Mexico. The spaceplane climbed above about 50 miles, the altitude the US uses to define an astronaut, and returned within about an hour. He carried out experiments during the few minutes of weightlessness, becoming Türkiye's second person in space. Both flights were part of the Turkish Space Agency's national human spaceflight program.