A NASA timeline covering the 1958 founding, Mercury and Gemini, Apollo moon landings, Shuttle and ISS, Hubble and JWST, Mars rovers, Commercial Crew, and Artemis.
From the 1958 Space Act through Apollo, the Shuttle, the ISS, and Artemis, NASA has defined U.S. civilian spaceflight. This timeline hits the agency's founding, crewed milestones, tragedies, great observatories, and the commercial crew era.
President Eisenhower signs the Space Act on 29 July 1958, creating NASA as a civilian space agency.
NASA opens on 1 October 1958, absorbing NACA's labs, about 8,000 employees, and aeronautics research.
Within days of opening, NASA formally starts work on America's first crewed spaceflight program.
On Freedom 7, Alan Shepard flies a 15-minute suborbital Mercury mission - the first American in space.
President Kennedy tells Congress the nation should land a man on the Moon and return him safely before the decade ends.
John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit Earth aboard Friendship 7.
During Gemini 4, Edward H. White Jr. becomes the first U.S. astronaut to walk in space.
A ground-test fire kills Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, forcing major Apollo redesigns.
Apollo 8 becomes the first crewed mission to leave Earth orbit and circle the Moon.
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land Eagle on 20 July 1969 while Michael Collins orbits overhead.
NASA launches Skylab on 14 May 1973, the first U.S. space station, using Apollo-era hardware.
An Apollo spacecraft docks with a Soviet Soyuz, a landmark U.S.-Soviet cooperative flight.
Columbia flies STS-1 on 12 April 1981, opening the reusable Space Shuttle era.
Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds after liftoff on STS-51-L, killing all seven crew members.
Discovery deploys Hubble on STS-31, beginning decades of space-based astronomy.
The Zarya module launches on 20 November 1998, starting International Space Station assembly.
Columbia breaks up on reentry at the end of STS-107, killing seven astronauts and grounding the fleet.
Atlantis flies STS-135, the 135th and last shuttle mission, ending the program in July 2011.
The Curiosity rover lands in Gale Crater, opening a new era of long-lived Mars surface science.
SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 returns crewed launches from U.S. soil to the ISS under NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
Perseverance lands in Jezero Crater with the Ingenuity helicopter, expanding Mars sample-caching science.
JWST lifts off on an Ariane 5, becoming NASA's flagship infrared observatory successor to Hubble.
Artemis I sends the Orion spacecraft around the Moon on NASA's first integrated SLS test flight.
The agency marks 65 years of operations, spanning Mercury through Artemis and deep-space science.
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