Highlights of the U.S. Space Program

President John F. Kennedy in his historic message to a joint session of the Congress, on May 25, 1961 declared, "...I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him

1961: Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr. during suiting for the first manned suborbital flight, MR-3 mission. The Freedom 7 spacecraft, carrying the first American, Astronaut Shepard and boosted by the Mercury-Redstone launch vehicle, lifted off on May 5, 196

1965 Edward H. White II, pilot of the Gemini 4 spacecraft, floats in the zero gravity of space with an earth limb backdrop. This represents the first time an American has stepped outside the confines of his spacecraft. White is attached to the spacecraft

May 1969: This NASA studio file image shows the Apollo 11 crew of U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong, (L) who was the Mission Commander and the first man to step on the moon, Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, (R), who was the Lunar Module Pilot, and Michael Collins, (C) w

July 1969: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera.

1974: NASA�s first space station, Skylab, was almost an immediate failure. The first crew, led by Pete Conrad, saved the mission by installing a sunshade to replace a meteoroid/sun shield that had torn off during launch.

1975: Astronauts Thomas P. Stafford (left) and Donald K. "Deke" Slayton hold containers of Soviet space food in the Soyuz Orbital Module during the joint U.S.-USSR Apollo-Soyuz Test Project docking in Earth orbit mission. The containers hold borsch (beet

1981: The April 12 launch at Pad 39A of STS-1 carries astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen into an Earth orbital mission scheduled to last for 54 hours, ending with unpowered landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

1983: Astronaut Sally K. Ride, the first woman to orbit the earth. Here she monitors control panels from the pilot's chair on the Flight Deck on STS-7, where she was mission specialist.

1984: Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless II ventured further away from the safety of his ship than any previous astronaut ever has. This was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. After a series of test ma

January 1986: The Space Shuttle Challenger explodes seconds after takeoff. Seven crew members perished in the explosion.

The Space Shuttle Discovery deploys the Hubble Space Telescope. April 24, 1990

International Space Station, the largest object ever flown in space. First proposed in 1984, in-orbit construction of the station began in 1998 and is scheduled for completion by mid-2012.

Debris from the space shuttle Columbia streaks across the Texas sky Saturday morning, Feb. 1. 2003. (AP Photo/Jason Hutchinson)

July 8: The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis is the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA. (AP Photo/Chris O'Meara)