History of Space Travel

The history of space travel is one of the most remarkable stories of the 20th and 21st centuries. In less than 70 years, humans went from never having put anything into orbit, to walking on the Moon, sending robots to every planet in the Solar System, and (now) launching private rockets that land themselves back on barges in the ocean. The story is a tale of two superpowers, then many countries, and now private companies, all racing to push further out into the universe.

  • First satelliteSputnik 14 October 1957, by the USSR
  • First human in spaceYuri Gagarin12 April 1961, USSR
  • First Moon landingApollo 1120 July 1969, USA
  • First space stationSalyut 119 April 1971, USSR
  • First space shuttleColumbia STS-112 April 1981, NASA
  • Most distant spacecraftVoyager 1Launched 1977, now approx. 24 billion km away

Before 1957: dreams and rockets

Long before anyone reached orbit, people had been dreaming about space. The Russian physics teacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky worked out the basic equations of rocketry in 1903. The American engineer Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket in 1926. In Germany, a team led by Wernher von Braun developed the V-2 rocket during the Second World War, the first man-made object to reach the edge of space. After the war, both the United States and the Soviet Union scooped up German rocket scientists and used their work as the starting point for their own space programmes.

The space race (1957 to 1969)

The most exciting period of space history is the dozen years of the space race, when the United States and the Soviet Union competed for one "first" after another.

  • 4 October 1957: the Soviet Union launches Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite. The Americans are shocked.
  • 3 November 1957: Sputnik 2 launches with the dog Laika on board, the first living creature to reach orbit.
  • 12 April 1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbits the Earth in Vostok 1, the first human in space.
  • 20 February 1962: American astronaut John Glenn orbits the Earth in Friendship 7.
  • 16 June 1963: Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman in space.
  • 18 March 1965: Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov performs the first spacewalk.
  • 20 July 1969: Apollo 11 lands and Neil Armstrong becomes the first human to walk on the Moon. The space race effectively ends with an American win.

Stations and shuttles (1971 to 2011)

After Apollo, the focus shifted away from racing each other and towards living and working in space for longer periods. The Soviet Union launched the first space station, Salyut 1, in 1971. The Americans launched their own first station, Skylab, in 1973. The Soviets later launched the much bigger Mir, which orbited from 1986 to 2001.

The United States built the Space Shuttle, the first reusable spacecraft, which flew 135 missions between 1981 and 2011. It carried satellites, science experiments, the Hubble Space Telescope and astronaut crews to and from orbit. Two shuttles (Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003) were lost in accidents that killed all 14 astronauts on board.

From the mid-1990s, the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada worked together to build the International Space Station (ISS), which has been continuously occupied by crews of astronauts since November 2000.

Robotic exploration of the Solar System

While humans have only travelled to low Earth orbit and the Moon, our robots have visited every planet in the Solar System. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes (both launched in 1977) flew past Jupiter and Saturn, with Voyager 2 going on to Uranus and Neptune as well. Both are now in interstellar space and still phoning home.

Mars has been visited by dozens of orbiters, landers and rovers, including NASA's Sojourner (1997), the twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity (2004), Curiosity (2012) and Perseverance (2021). Other notable missions include Cassini at Saturn (2004 to 2017), New Horizons, which flew past Pluto in 2015, and Juno, which has been orbiting Jupiter since 2016.

Fact Before any human went into space, dozens of animals were sent up first to see if they would survive: dogs, monkeys, mice, fruit flies, tortoises and even a chimpanzee called Ham (a 1961 NASA test). Tragically not all of them came back. Laika, the first dog in orbit (1957), died from heat and stress within hours of launch. Today most space animals are insects or microbes used for scientific experiments, often returning safely.

The new space age (2000s to now)

For the first fifty years of space travel, only governments could afford to build rockets. That changed in the 2000s and 2010s. Private companies like SpaceX (founded in 2002), Blue Origin, Rocket Lab and others have built their own launch vehicles. SpaceX has revolutionised the industry by building the first reusable rockets that land themselves back on Earth after launch, dramatically cutting the cost of getting to orbit. SpaceX has also flown private astronauts to the ISS, launched satellites for dozens of countries, and is working on the giant Starship for trips to Mars.

Did you know? Several countries beyond the US, USSR and Europe now have active human space programmes. China launched its first crewed mission in 2003 and now operates its own space station (Tiangong, completed in 2022). India landed a robotic probe on the south pole of the Moon in 2023 (Chandrayaan-3). Japan and the United Arab Emirates also operate active interplanetary probes.
Deeper dive: from V-2 to Saturn V

The story of rocket technology has a slightly uncomfortable origin. During World War II, Nazi Germany developed the V-2 rocket, the first man-made object to reach the edge of space. The V-2 was a weapon: about 3,000 were launched at London, Antwerp and other Allied cities, killing thousands. The lead designer was a young German engineer named Wernher von Braun.

When Germany surrendered in 1945, both the United States and the Soviet Union rushed to capture German rocket scientists, designs and equipment. In a controversial operation called Operation Paperclip, the US brought hundreds of German scientists to America (along with all the V-2 hardware they could grab). Von Braun himself worked first for the US Army developing missiles, then for NASA, where he became the chief designer of the Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon. The Soviets did much the same with their own captured German scientists, and built their own R-7 rocket (the launcher used for Sputnik and Gagarin).

Almost every modern rocket family is descended from the work of those engineers. SpaceX's Falcon 9 and the modern Russian Soyuz both trace their ancestry back to the V-2. It is a stark reminder that science can be used for both terrible and inspiring ends, sometimes by the same people in the same lifetime.

For specific missions, see Apollo, Voyager, the ISS, Hubble or SpaceX.