Timeline of rocket and missile technology

This article gives a concise timeline of rocket and missile technology. Rockets and missiles have played important roles in history, from simple fireworks to powerful tools that can travel into space. Understanding how these devices developed helps us see how humans have explored new ways to move and reach far-off places. The story of rockets and missiles is filled with exciting inventions and discoveries that changed how we think about travel and defense.

11th century – 13th century

In the 11th century, China had the first known records of gunpowder and a device called the fire arrow, which was an early type of rocket. Around the year 1250 in Europe, two people, Roger Bacon and a book called the Liber Ignium, shared ways to make what look like rockets.

17th century – 19th century

In the 1600s and 1800s, many important steps were taken in rocket technology. In 1633, Lagâri Hasan Çelebi launched a rocket with seven wings from Istanbul using gunpowder. In 1798, Tipu Sultan, the King of Mysore in India, made and used iron rockets against the British Army. The British Army later created their own version called the Congreve rocket in 1801.

Other inventors also made important contributions. In 1844, William Hale created a rocket that spun to stay steady in flight. In 1861, William Leitch wrote about how rockets could travel to space because they would work better without air. These early ideas helped lay the groundwork for future advances in rocket technology.

20th century

• 1902 - French cinema pioneer Georges Méliès directs A Trip to the Moon, the first film about space travel.
• 1903 - Konstantin Tsiolkovsky began writing about using rocketry to travel to space, space suits, and settling the Solar System. He talked about liquid fuels and staging.
• 1913 - French engineer Robert Esnault-Pelterie worked out the math for space flight and shared his ideas in a paper. He created the rocket equation and figured out how much energy is needed to reach the Moon and nearby planets.
• 1916 - Rockets were first used in battles, both from airplanes to other airplanes and from airplanes to the ground, using solid fuel Le Prieur rocket.
• 1921 - The Gas Dynamics Laboratory was set up in the USSR by N. I. Tikhomirov. This was the first place to study and build rockets.
• 1922 - Hermann Oberth published a book called Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen ("By Rocket into Planetary Space") about rockets and space travel.
• 1924 - A group called the Society for Studies of Interplanetary Travel was started in Moscow by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Friedrich Zander, and 200 other space experts.
• 1926 - Robert Goddard launched the first rocket with liquid fuel. This event is seen by many as the beginning of the Space Age.
• 1927 - A group called the Verein für Raumschiffahrt (Spaceflight Society) was started in Germany.
• 1928 - In Germany, people showed off rocket tests in public, started by Max Valier and Fritz von Opel, using Opel RAK. They set speed records for cars and trains that year.
• 1928 - The first test of a solid fuel rocket in the Soviet Union was done by the Gas Dynamics Laboratory. It flew for about 1,300 meters.
• 1929 - Woman in the Moon came out. It is considered one of the first serious science fiction movies.
• 1931 - Friedrich Schmiedl tried to start the first rocket mail service in Austria.
• 1933 - Sergei Korolev and Mikhail Tikhonravov launched the first liquid-fueled rocket in the Soviet Union.
• 1935 - Emilio Herrera Linares from Spain created the first full-pressured astronaut suit, called the escafandra estratonáutica. Later, the Russians used a version of this suit when they started flying in space, and then the Americans used it too when they began their space program.
• 1936 - Rocket research started at the Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (GALCIT), which later became the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This research was led by Frank Malina and Theodore von Kármán.
• 1937 - The Peenemünde Army Research Center was established in Germany.
• 1938 - The Projectile Development Establishment was set up at Fort Halstead to study military solid-fuel rockets for the United Kingdom.
• 1939 - Katyusha multiple rocket launchers were built and used for the first time by the Soviet Union. These are a type of rocket artillery.
• 1941 - The French rocket EA-41 was launched. It was the first European rocket to use liquid propellant. However, it came after some rockets made by Peenemunde and the Soviet Union.
• 1941 - Jet Assisted Take Off JATO was placed on US Army Air Corp Ercoupe airplanes on August 12 in March Field, California.
• 1942 - Wernher von Braun and Walter Dornberger launched the first V-2 rocket at Peenemünde in northern Germany.
• 1942 - A V-2 rocket reached a height of 85 km.
• 1944 - The V-2 rocket MW 18014 reached a height of 176 km. This made it the first object made by humans to reach space.
• 1945 - Operation Paperclip brought 1,600 German rocket scientists and technicians to the United States.
• 1945 - Operation Osoaviakhim brought 2,000 German rocket scientists and technicians to the Soviet Union.
• 1946 - The first flight of the Nike missile happened. Later, this became the first surface-to-air guided missile that could be used in real operations.
• 1947 - The first animals sent into space were fruit flies. They were on a V-2 rocket launched from New Mexico, USA.
• 1947 - Chuck Yeager flew faster than the speed of sound for the first time. He did this in a Bell X-1 airplane that used rocket power.
• 1949 - Willy Ley published a book called The Conquest of Space.
• 1952 - On May 22, the French Véronique 1 rocket was launched from the Algerian desert.
• 1952 - Wernher von Braun wrote about how people could explore Mars in a book called Das Marsprojekt.
• 1953 - A magazine called Colliers published a series of articles about what the future of space might look like. This made people all over the world very excited about space. The articles were written by Ley and von Braun and had paintings by Chesley Bonestell.
• 1956 - The first launch of the PGM-17 Thor happened. This was the first ballistic missile from the United States and it led to the Delta space launch rockets.
• 1957 - The first ICBM, the USSR’s R-7 (8K71), known to NATO as the SS-6 Sapwood, was launched.
• 1957 - The USSR launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite.
• 1958 - The U.S. launched Explorer 1, the first American artificial satellite, using a Jupiter-C rocket.
• 1958 - The US launched their first ICBM, the Atlas-B. The Atlas-A was only used for testing.
• 1961 - The US launched the Mercury-Redstone 2 mission. This mission sent a chimpanzee named Ham to space. He was the first Hominidae in space.
• 1961 - The USSR launched Vostok 1. Yuri Gagarin flew to a height of 327 km above Earth and became the first person to orbit Earth.
• 1961 - The US launched a Mercury capsule called Freedom 7 with Alan B. Shepard. The spacecraft was launched by a Redstone rocket and flew a short trip above Earth.
• 1962 - The US launched Mercury MA-6 (Friendship 7) using an Atlas D booster. John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth.
• 1962 - Pakistan launched Rehbar-I and became the first country in the Islamic world to launch a spacecraft into space.
• 1963 - The USSR launched Vostok 6. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman (and first civilian) to orbit Earth. She stayed in space for almost three days and orbited Earth 48 times.
• 1963 - The US X-15 rocket-plane, which was the first reusable crewed spacecraft to fly above Earth, reached space. It showed that spacecraft could be used again, launched, and landed like a plane.
• 1965 - The USSR used the Proton rocket for many important missions. It carried payloads like Salyut 6 and Salyut 7, Mir, and parts of the ISS.
• 1965 - Robert Salked studied different ideas for spaceplanes that could go into space in one step.
• 1965 - FR Diamant became the first French and European rocket to reach orbit. This made France the third country to launch a rocket into space.

• 1966 - The USSR’s Luna 9 was the first spacecraft to land softly on the Moon.
• 1966 - The USSR launched Soyuz spacecraft. This spacecraft has been used for many years in Soviet, Russian, and International space missions.
• 1968 - The USSR’s Zond 5 sent two tortoises and some smaller living things around the Moon. They came back safely to Earth.
• 1968 - The US Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to reach and orbit the Moon.
• 1969 - The US Apollo 11 was the first mission where people landed on the Moon and walked on its surface.
• 1975 - The ESA, the European Space Agency, was created.
• 1979 - The EU’s Ariane 1 was the first Ariane European rocket.
• 1980 - The EU’s Arianespace was created. This was the world’s first company to sell space travel services.
• 1981 - The US Space Shuttle was designed to be used again and again and could land like a plane.
• 1988 - The EU’s Ariane 4 had its first launch.
• 1988 - The USSR’s Energia rocket carried the Buran spaceplane into orbit.
• 1996 - The EU’s Ariane 5 had its first flight but it failed and fell apart during the flight. After that, Ariane 5 became the main European rocket for many years.
• 1998 - The US Deep Space 1 was the first deep space mission to use an ion thruster to move.
• 1998 - Russia launched the Zarya module. This was the first part of the International Space Station.

21st century

In the 21st century, many exciting achievements in space travel took place. In 2001, a Russian spacecraft carried the first space tourist to the International Space Station. In 2004, a private spacecraft called SpaceShipOne showed that reusable space travel was possible. In 2008, SpaceX launched a rocket into orbit for the first time as a private company.

Later, in 2012, SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft became the first private capsule to connect with the International Space Station. In 2014 and 2015, SpaceX made history again by successfully landing a rocket stage back on Earth. In 2018, New Zealand launched its first rocket into orbit, which used a special engine and carried a bright, spinning satellite called "Humanity Star." In 2023, India landed a spacecraft on a new part of the Moon, and in 2024, SpaceX caught a rocket stage for the first time.