Anniversary

On May 5, 1961, about 45 million US television viewers watched as a single-stage Redstone rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral. Mercury Redstone 3 carried Alan Shepard on a 15-minute flight to become America's first man in space.

The Hubble Space Telescope is celebrating its 30th launch anniversary with the release of a breathtakingly colorful portrait of star forming Nebulae - collectively nicknamed the "Cosmic Reef" - located in a galaxy orbiting the Milky Way.

​On this day ten years ago, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Columbus laboratory was launched into orbit, safely nestled in the mammoth cargo bay of the space shuttle Atlantis.

​This month marks the 20 year anniversary of the identification of the very first exoplanet orbiting a Sun-like star - 51 Pegasi b.

On March 18, 1965, Soviet cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Pavel Belyayev lifted off in Voskhod (Sunrise) 2, during the flight of which Leonov would become the first person to step into the vacuum of space.

Break out the party hats because NASA’s Curiosity rover is celebrating its second anniversary on Mars. Two years ago today, the unmanned spacecraft touched down at Bradbury Landing in Gale Crater on the start of a multi-year mission to study the Red Planet.

This Saturday, December 21st, marks the 45th anniversary of Apollo 8 lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center and into history as the first manned mission to orbit the Moon. It not only paved the way for Apollo 11, but is also seen by some as a greater achievement than the Moon landing itself.

A remarkable milestone in human history took place exactly 50 years ago today when Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space.