1. First satellite, Sputnik 1 (4 October 1957)
2. First human in orbit, Yuri Gagarin (12 April 1961)
3. First humans on the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin (20 July 1969)
4. First humans to orbit the Moon, Apollo 8 (24 December 1968)
5. Loss of the shuttle Challenger (28 January 1986)
6. Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope (24 April 1990)
7. First US satellite, Explorer 1 (31 January 1958)
8. First rover on Mars, Pathfinder/Sojourner (4 July 1997)
9. First woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova (16 June 1963)
10. Launch of Voyager 2 for the outer planets (20 August 1977)
While such lists are always somewhat subjective, this top 10 seems pretty reasonable to me, except perhaps for putting Pathfinder before Viking 1 landing on Mars (#23, 20 July 1976), based on the public response to the 1997 mission, which was the first to make images immediately available through the web. It's sad that the destruction of the Challenger makes the top 10 while the first shuttle launch is down at #26 (12 April 1981), but the Challenger loss was certainly a more "pivotal" moment in space age history.
1 comment:
Astroprof did his seven wonders, and I put together a top-ten in response: http://catholicsensibility.wordpress.com/2007/07/19/seven-wonders-of-space-exploration/
Cassini and Galileo I rated pretty high, but Sputnik 1 didn't really register for me.
Nice blog, btw.
Todd
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