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Valentina Tereshkova was born in the Yaroslavl Region of Russia on March 6, 1937. She was the second born of three children. Her father was a tractor driver and her mother worked in a textile plant. Valentina began school in 1945 at the age of eight. In 1953, she left school and began working. She continued her education by correspondence courses.

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sep. 29, 1945: Weather von Braun arrives at Ft. Bliss, Texas, with six other German rocket specialists.

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Oct. 14, 1947: American test pilot Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier for the first time in the X-1, also known as Glamorous Glennis.

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On Oct. 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 successfully launched and entered Earth's orbit. Thus, began the space age. The successful launch shocked the world, giving the former Soviet Union the distinction of putting the first human-made object into space

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A month later, on November 3, 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik II, a half-ton satellite that carried a female dog, Laika, into orbit. Although Sputnik I shocked and irritated Americans, it did not particularly frighten them. Assured by the President and the media, they believed a U.S. satellite would have been first if Eisenhower had permitted the use of classified military rockets. Annoyed that the Soviets were "first into space," they were still confident that U.S. technology was far ahead of that of the USSR.

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One of the Vanguard satellites checked out at Cape Canaveral, Florida in 1958. The Navy-led program had a series of high-profile launch mishaps, but ultimately put up Vanguard 1, in March 1958. It was the second U.S. satellite in orbit, following Explorer 1 by a month.

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Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into space on January 31, 1958. Following the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter C rocket developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun.

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12 February 1961	First launch from Earth orbit of upper stage into a heliocentric orbit First mid-course corrections First spin-stabilisation	USSR

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12 April 1961	First human spaceflight (Yuri Gagarin) First human-crewed orbital flight	USSR

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On the morning of May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan Shepard crawled into the cramped Mercury capsule, "Freedom 7," at Launch Complex 5 at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The slender, 82-foot-tall Mercury-Redstone rocket rose from the launch pad at 9:34 a.m. EST, sending Shepard on a remarkably successful, 15-minute suborbital flight.

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On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 lifted off for the moon with Commander Jim Lovell, Command Module Pilot Jack Swigert and Lunar Module Pilot Fred Haise aboard. Two days later, with the spacecraft well on its way to the moon, an oxygen tank exploded, scrubbing the lunar landing and putting the crew in jeopardy.

Working with Mission Control in Houston, the crew used their lunar module as a "lifeboat," and even rigged an adapter so than a command module "air scrubber" would work in the lunar module, preventing a dangerous buildup of carbon dioxide.

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The launch of Skylab, America's first space station, on board a modified Saturn V rocket from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Fla. on May 14, 1973, marked a new phase for American's human space flight program. Once again Americans stood poised to leave behind their terrestrial abode, but this time with a much different goal: staying in space for longer periods and conducting complex scientific experiments in the unique space environment.

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Between the first launch on April 12, 1981, and the final landing on July 21, 2011, NASA's space shuttle fleet -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour -- flew 135 missions, helped construct the International Space Station and inspired generations. NASA's space shuttle fleet began setting records with its first launch on April 12, 1981 and continued to set high marks of achievement and endurance through 30 years of missions. 

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The primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.

Additional flight objectives included scientific exploration by the lunar module, or LM, crew; deployment of a television camera to transmit signals to Earth; and deployment of a solar wind composition experiment, seismic experiment package and a Laser Ranging Retroreflector. 