Spaceflight history  (some highlights)

               Spoetnik 1  october 4, 1957

               Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin   

               First human in space and the first to orbit the Earth. 

               April 12, 1961  (Vostok 1)

               The Earth is blue [...] How wonderfull. It is amazing.

             - Gagarin to Ground Control.

                                         Apollo 8, the first manned spaceflight to orbit the moon.

                                   December 24, 1968

                  Neil Alden Armstrong

                  First person to set foot on the Moon.

                  Photo taken by Buzz Aldrin in the Apollo Lunar Module after the historic moonwalk. 

                  July 21, 1969  (Apollo 11)

                 "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind".

                 - Armstrong, when he set his left boot on the surface of the Moon.

                       Photo credit:  NASA / JSC scan

                  James Irwin at the Lunar Rover at the end of EVA-1. 

               July 31, 1971  (Apollo 15)

               Photo credit: NASA / JSC scan

               Mariner 10

               First spacecraft to visit Mercury in 1974 and 1975 with the use of a "gravity assist" swing by of the planet Venus.

               Credit: NASA/JPL

               Viking 1 Lander

               First photograph on the surface of Mars - July 20, 1976.

                  Image credit: NASA/JPL

                                      John W. Young (left) and Robert L. Crippen the crew of the first Space Shuttle,

                                      launched without an unmanned powered test flight.

                                              Credit: NASA

                                            Space Shuttle Columbia STS-1 Launch on April 12, 1981.

               Venera 13/14  Le Bourget - Paris, June 1983

               Two identical spacecrafts, they returned the first color images from the surface of Venus in 1982.

                  The Hubble Space Telescoop carried into orbit by Space Shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990.

                                         An artist's interpretation of the area surrounding the Huygens landing site on Titan

                                         based on images and data returned on January 2005.

              The Mars Curiosity Rover landed on August 5, 2012 on the red planet Mars.

Rosetta probe.

The first to orbit a comet (67p Tjoerjoemov -Gerasimenko) on August 6, 2014.

Credit: ESA

New Horizons probe.

The first to visited Pluto - July 14, 2015.

Credit: NASA / JHUAPL / SWRI