History of spaceflight out by NASA. The programs goal was to orbit and land manned vehicles on the moon. The program ran from 1969 to 1972. Apollo 8 was the first manned spaceflight to leave earth orbit and orbit the Earth's moon on December 21, 1968. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. The Skylab programs goal was to create the first space station of NASA. The program marked the last launch of the Saturn V rocket on May 19, 1973. Many experiments were performed on
History of spaceflight History of spaceflight Spaceflight began in the 20th century following theoretical and practical breakthroughs by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert H. Goddard. The Soviet Union took the lead in the post-war Space Race, launching the first satellite, the first man and the first woman into orbit. The United States caught up with, and then passed, their Soviet rivals during the mid-1960s, landing the first man on the Moon in 1969. In the same period, France, the United Kingdom, Japan and China were concurrently developing more limited launch capabilities. Following the end of the Space Race, spaceflight has been characterised by greater