July 21

1958: The U.S. House of Representatives establishes the Standing Committee on Science and Astronautics. Three days later, the U.S. Senate established the Standing Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

July 22

1962: NASA launches the Mariner 1 space probe on an Atlas-Agena B rocket from Cape Canaveral, Planned as a flyby mission to Venus, the probe was destroyed almost 5 minutes after liftoff by the range safety officer after the rocket flew off-course.

July 23

1930: Hungarian-born rocket scientist Hermann Oberth successfully tests his cone-shaped, liquid-oxygen and gasoline-fueled rocket motor for the director of ‘s State Chemical-Technical Institute.

1945: Life Magazine publishes illustrations of a space station concept developed by Wernher von Braun’s Peenemnde, Germany-based rocket development team.

1972: NASA’s Landsat 1, the first in a series of remote sensing satellites, launches on a Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base,

1980: Vietnamese cosmonaut Pham Taum lifts off on a Soviet Soyuz rocket launched from BaikonurCosmodrome, becoming the first person not from the United States, or an Eastern Bloc nation to go to space.

1999: Astronaut Eileen Collins becomes the first woman to command a space mission. Collins and the STS-93 crew launched NASA’s Space Shuttle Columbia from , on a five- day mission, during which they released NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory.

July 24

1950: , hosts its first rocket launch. The Bumper launch vehicle consisted of a V-2 first stage and a U.S. Army Wac Corporal second stage.

1992: The joint Japan-U.S. Geotail satellite, designed to study Earth’s magnetic field, launches on a Delta 2 rocket from

July 25

1973:The Soviet Union Cosmodrome on a Proton rocket to study the red planet. The orbiter operated for only a few days due to a transmitter malfunction. The retrorockets on the similar Mars 4 spacecraft, which launched four days earlier, failed, causing the intended orbiter to fly past the red planet.

July 26

1963: NASA’s Syncom 2 communications satellite, the first successful geosynchronous satellite according to NASA, launches on a Thor-Delta rocket from

1971: NASA’s Apollo 15 launches to the Moon on a Saturn 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, During their mission, David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to drive a lunar rover on the Moon.

2005: Marking the first shuttle flight since the February 2003 accident, NASA’s Space Shuttle Discovery launches from Cape Canaveral,