Event Types: Aviation and Aeronautics

First flight of K5054, the first prototype Supermarine Spitfire advanced monoplane fighter aircraft in the United Kingdom. Dame Fanny Lucy Houston is considered “the saviour of the Spitfire” as her […]

NASA named 35 candidates to fly on the space shuttle Challenger, including Sally K. Ride, who became America’s first woman in space.

Bobbi Trout and Edna May Cooper broke an endurance record for female aviators as they returned to Mines Field in Los Angeles after flying a Curtiss Robin monoplane continuously for […]

The crew of Apollo 8 enters into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so. They performed ten lunar orbits and broadcast live TV pictures. Frances “Poppy” […]

NASA launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Before the Voyager program (in which Voyager 1 and 2 probes launched in the summer of 1977), planetary science was a male-dominated field. For […]

Chiaki Mukai, the first Japanese woman in space and the first Asian woman in space, became the the first Japanese citizen to have two spaceflights when the Space Shuttle Discovery […]

The space shuttle Challenger blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center on an 8-day mission; the crew included Kathryn D. Sullivan, who became the first American woman to walk in […]

Jacqueline Cochran, 47, became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet over Rogers Dry Lake, California.

Birth of record-setting aviator Geraldyn (Jerrie) Cobb, who was the first woman to pass qualifying exams for astronaut training (1959) but was not allowed to train because of her gender.

Birth of pilot Nancy Love, who ferried planes to Canada during World War II as Commander of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (WAFS) 1940-42, (the group was later absorbed into […]