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1915 NACA, the predecessor of NASA, is founded.
1958 The U.S. Congress formally creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA)
1958 NASA starts operations and replaces the NACA
1958 Pioneer 1, the second and most successful of three project Able space probes, became the first spacecraft launched by the newly formed NASA.
1959 NASA announces its selection of seven military pilots to become the first US astronauts (see Mercury Seven).
1960 September 8 — In Huntsville, Alabama, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
formally dedicates the Marshall Space Flight Center (NASA had already activated the facility on July 1).
1962 NASA launches the Mariner 2 space probe.
1963 Mercury program
: NASA launches the last mission of the program, Mercury 9 (on June 12 NASA Administrator James E. Webb tells Congress the program is complete).
1963 Syncom, the world's first geostationary (synchronous) satellite
, is orbited by NASA.
1964 Ranger 6 is launched by NASA. Its mission is to carry television
cameras and to crash-land on the Moon
.
1965 Ranger program: NASA launches Ranger 9, which is the last in a series of unmanned lunar
space probe
s.
1965 NASA launches ''Gemini 3'', with the United States
' first 2-person crew, into Earth orbit (Gus Grissom
and John Young).
1966 An XB-70 Valkyrie prototype is destroyed in a mid-air collision with a F-104 Starfighter chase plane during a photo shoot. NASA pilot Joseph A. Walker and USAF test pilot Carl Cross are both killed.
1967 Apollo program: NASA launches a Saturn V rocket carrying the unmanned Apollo 4 test spacecraft from Cape Kennedy.
1968 Apollo program: NASA launches ''Apollo 7'', the first manned Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Goals for the mission include the first live television
broadcast from orbit
and testing the lunar module docking maneuver.
1969 Apollo program: NASA launches ''Apollo 9'' (James McDivitt, David Scott
, Rusty Schweickart) to test the lunar module.
1969 Apollo program: NASA launches ''Apollo 12
'' (Pete Conrad
, Richard Gordon, Alan Bean), the second manned mission to the Moon
.
1970 NASA's
Explorer I
, the first American artificial satellite
and the first of the Explorer program
spacecrafts, reenters Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
1973 Mariner program
: NASA launches the Mariner 10 toward Mercury
(on March 29, 1974 it becomes the first space probe
to reach that planet).
1973 Skylab program: NASA launches Skylab 4 with a crew of three astronaut
s from Cape Canaveral, Florida for an 84-day mission.
1974 NASA's ATS-6 satellite is launched.
1975 Viking program
: NASA launches the Viking 1
planetary probe toward Mars.
1976 NASA releases the famous Face on Mars photo, taken by Viking 1
.
1977 The NASA Space Shuttle
makes its first test flight off the back of a jetliner.
1979 NASA's first orbiting space station Skylab
begins its return to Earth
, after being in orbit for six years and two months.
1980 Voyager program
: The NASA space probe ''Voyager I'' makes its closest approach to Saturn, when it flies within 77,000 miles of the planet
's cloud-tops and sends the first high resolution images of the world back to scientists on Earth
.
1987 NASA announces the names of four companies who were awarded contracts to help build Space Station Freedom: Boeing Aerospace
, General Electric
's Astro-Space Division, McDonnell Douglas, and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell.
1988 NASA resumes space shuttle
flights, grounded after the Challenger
disaster.
1993 NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Observer orbiter 3 days before the spacecraft is scheduled to enter orbit around Mars
.
1993 Shuttle program: STS-61 - NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair an optical flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope
.
1994 NASA loses radio
contact with the Magellan spacecraft as the probe descends into the thick atmosphere of Venus (the spacecraft presumably burned up in the atmosphere either October 13 or October 14).
1995 U.S. astronaut Norman Thagard breaks NASA's space endurance record of 14 days, one hour and 16 minutes, aboard the Russia
n space station Mir
.
1996 NASA announces that the ALH 84001 meteorite thought to originate from Mars, contains evidence of primitive life-forms.
1996 NASA launches the Mars Global Surveyor.
1997 October 15: NASA launches the Cassini-Huygens probe to Saturn.
]]
1997 NASA's Pathfinder space probe lands on the surface of Mars.
1998 NASA announces that John Glenn
will return to space when the Space Shuttle ''Discovery
'' blasts off in October.
1998 NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon
has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station.
1998 NASA announces the choice of United States Air Force
Lt. Col. Eileen Collins as commander of a future Space Shuttle ''Columbia
'' mission to launch an X-ray
telescope, making Collins the first woman commander of a space shuttle
mission.
1999 NASA intentionally crashes the Lunar Prospector spacecraft
into the Moon
, thus ending its mission to detect frozen water on the lunar surfa
1999 NASA loses one of its probes, the Mars Climate Orbiter.
1999 NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander, moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere.
2001 NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within 112 miles of Jupiter's moon Io.
2002 NASA's Mars Odyssey space probe
begins to map the surface of Mars using its thermal emission imaging system.
2004 NASA's MER-A (''Spirit'') lands on Mars at 04:35 UTC.
2004 NASA's MER-B (''Opportunity'') lands on Mars at 05:05 UTC.
2004 NASA announces that the Mars rover MER-B (Opportunity) has confirmed that its landing area was once drenched in water.
2004 NASA's hypersonic jet ''ScramJet'' breaks a record by reaching a velocity of about 7,000 mph in an unmanned experimental flight. It obtains a speed of Mach 9.6, almost 10 times the speed of sound
.
2005 NASA's "Copper bullet" from Deep Impact spacecraft hits Comet Tempel 1, creating a crater
for scientific studies.
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Timeline
