Find your moment in space history.

Explore a year in spaceflight, or turn to your birthday and discover the stories that share your date.

Choose a year

Drag the sun. Years restart at the bottom. Use arrow keys to move one archive year, wrapping between the first and last years. Use Home and End to reach the first and last years.

Archive year

A day to remember

What happened on your birthday?

Pick a month and day to see every dated event, across all years.

Browse a whole month

Follow a story

Selected stops from the full dated event archive.

A few stops along the orbit

Moments from 1969

29 sourced, day-dated events in this year

Feb 2501

Mariner 6 Begins Dual-Spacecraft Mars Reconnaissance

Twin-spacecraft campaign begins a broader close reconnaissance of Mars.

Open event

Apr 1402

Nimbus 3 Demonstrates Satellite Atmospheric Sounding

Atmospheric sounding and remote data collection broaden the Nimbus mission.

Open event

Aug 903

OSO-6 Detects Hard X-Ray Counterparts to Gamma-Ray Bursts

OSO-6 connects hard X-ray flashes with gamma-ray bursts.

Open event

Nov 2404

Apollo 12: Completed

Inspect Surveyor 3 and return selected spacecraft components after more than two years on the Moon.

Open event

These are selected stops from the dated archive. Browse all event records.

Preparing the time dial…