References are numbered in [brackets], which are listed here. A number after the dot gives the page in the source.

Last updated: 2023 December 20.

2005

January 12

• Deep Impact is launched from Cape Canaveral by a Delta 2 rocket. [26]

January 14

• The Huygens probe lands on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. [26]

January 15

• ESA's SMART-1 lunar orbiter discovers elements such as calcium, aluminum, silicon, iron and other surface elements on the moon. [5]

March 15

• The European Space Agency's SMART-1 probe enters the Moon's orbit, to begin studying the chemical composition and geophysical processes of the Moon. [524.45]

June 21

• A Volna booster rocket carrying the first light sail spacecraft (a joint Russian-American project) fails 83 seconds after its launch, destroying the spacecraft. [26]

July 4

• NASA's "Copper bullet" from Deep Impact spacecraft hits Comet Tempel 1, creating a crater for scientific studies. [26]

July 26

• Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on its "Return To Flight" mission. This is the first space shuttle flight in nearly 2 1/2 years since the breakup of Space Shuttle Columbia on its return from mission STS-107. [26] [129]

August 9

• Space Shuttle Discovery returns to Edwards Air Force Base at 8:14 AM EDT, completing STS-114, "Return to Flight." [26]

August 12

• The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is launched. [26]

August 22

• A 4.1-kg (9-pound) meteorite crashes into the Dotito area of Zambezi Escarpment in Zimbabwe, leaving a 15-cm (6-inch) crater. [26]

October 12

• The second Chinese spacecraft, Shenzhou 6, is launched, carrying Fei Junlong and Nie Haisheng for five days in orbit. [5] [26]

November 9

• The Venus Express mission of the European Space Agency is launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. [5]

2006

January 15

• NASA's Stardust mission successfully ends, the first to return dust from a comet. [27]

January 16

• NASA launches the New Horizons spacecraft from Florida, on a mission to rendezvous Pluto and its Moon Charon. [455.4]

January 25

• Three independent observing campaigns announce the discovery of the first cool rocky/icy extrasolar planet around a main-sequence star (OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, near the center of the Milky Way galaxy). [5]

March 4

• The final contact attempt with Pioneer 10 receives no response. [27]
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March 9

• NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft discovers geysers of a liquid substance shooting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, signaling a possible presence of water. [27]

March 10

• NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter enters Mars orbit. [27]

March 30

• The first Brazilian astronaut, Marcos Pontes, goes to space in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft, Soyuz TMA-8, at 2:29:00 CET. [27]

April 11

• The European Space Agency's Venus Express spaceprobe enters Venus' orbit. [27]

May 5

• NASA astronomers announce the discovery of a storm system in the Jovian atmosphere, dubbed the Red Spot Junior. [27]

June 18

• The first Kazakh space satellite "KazSat" is launched. [27]

July 3

• The asteroid labeled as 2004 XP14 flies within 432,308 km (268,624 miles) of Earth. [5]

July 4

• Space Shuttle Discovery is launched to the International Space Station. It returns safely on July 17. [27]

July 17

• Space Shuttle Discovery returns to Earth from the International Space Station, thirteen days after its launch. [27]

August 24

• The International Astronomical Union defines 'planet' at its 26th General Assembly, demoting Pluto to the status of 'dwarf planet' more than 70 years after its discovery. [5] [27]

September 3

• The European Space Agency's SMART-1 is deliberately crashed into the Moon, the first controlled lunar impact accompanied by real-time observation from Earth. [524.47] [1587.6]

September 9

• Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on a mission to build up the International Space Station. It returns safe and successful on September 21. [27]

September 13

• The solar system's largest dwarf planet, designated until now as 2003 UB313, is officially named "Eris"; its satellite is now known as "Dysnomia". [27]

November 8

• A transit of Mercury occurs. [27]

November 16

• NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office observes two Leonid asteroids hit the Moon, making 11 confirmed impacts in one year. [521]

December 10

• NASA space shuttle Discovery lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center on the first night launch since the 2003 loss of Columbia. [27]
• Christer Fuglesang becomes the first Swede in space. [27]

December 22

• The NASA space shuttle Discovery lands at the Kennedy Space Center, concluding a two-week mission to the International Space Station. [27]

2007

January 12

• Comet McNaught, the brightest comet in over 40 years, makes perihelion. [38]

January 15

• Comet McNaught makes perigee after coming close to the sun. [5]

January 18

• Comet McNaught, the brightest comet to appear in over 40 years, becomes visible over the Southern Hemisphere. [38]

February 25

• The European Space Agency confirms Rosetta's successful Mars trajectory fly-by. [38]

February 28

• The New Horizons space probe makes a gravitational slingshot against Jupiter which changes its trajectory towards Pluto. [38]

March 3

• Total lunar eclipse. [38]

April 24

• Gliese 581 c, a potentially habitable Earth-like extrasolar planet, is discovered in the constellation Libra. [38]

May 31

• A calendar blue moon occurs in the Western Hemisphere and parts of the Eastern Hemisphere. [38]

June 5

• NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second fly-by of Venus en route to Mercury. [38]

June 8

• The Space Shuttle Atlantis is successfully launched on mission STS-117. [38]

June 30

• A calendar blue moon occurs in most of the Eastern Hemisphere. [38]

July 2

• Venus and Saturn are in conjunction, separation 46 arcsecs. [38]

August 4

• At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, NASA launches a Delta II rocket carrying the Mars Phoenix lander to explore the north of Mars. (The Phoenix will successfully land and return pictures in May 2008.) [38] [57]

August 8

• The Space Shuttle Endeavour is successfully launched on mission STS-118. [38]

August 21

• STS-118 lands at the Kennedy Space Center, completing Space Shuttle Endeavour's 19th flight. [38]

September 14

• Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency launches their first space probe to the Moon, the KAGUYA (SELENE) spacecraft. Its mission is to study surface composition [38] [524.50]

October 23

• The Space Shuttle Discovery is successfully launched on mission STS-120. [38]

October 24

• In the space of a few hours, Comet Holmes develops a coma and flares up to half a million times its former brightness, becoming visible to the naked eye. Its coma later becomes larger in volume than the Sun, making it the second comet to do so in 2007 after Comet McNaught. [38]
• The Chinese National Space Administration launches its first space probe to the Moon, Chang'e-1, from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center. [191.49] [524.50]

December 7

• Uranus' orbit is positioned such that the sun shines directly above its equator (i.e. an equinox). [38]

2008

January 14

• The U.S. space agency's MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) probe passes about 126 miles over Mercury. This is the first spacecraft since 1975 to fly past the planet. [35] [310]

January 23

• At the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York, Virgin Galactic unveils the design of its next generation of space vehicles, named White Knight Two, and SpaceShipTwo, intending to take paying passengers into space on a regular basis next year. [35] [108.12,66]

February 4

• Iran opens its first space center and launches a rocket into space. [310]

February 7

• STS-122: Space Shuttle Atlantis launches to deliver the European-built Columbus science laboratory to the International Space Station. [310]

February 12

• At the International Space Station, the Columbus laboratory module built by the Europe Space Agency is installed and opened for the first time. [35]

February 18

• Space shuttle Atlantis departs from the International Space Station, after delivering a European laboratory. [35]

February 20

• A total lunar eclipse crosses North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Southwest Asia. [310]
• A U.S. Navy warship neat Hawaii fires a missile at a defunct spy satellite 153 miles up in the atmosphere, to destroy the fuel tank of hydrazine fuel, to prevent it from being released as a toxic gas if it had fallen to Earth. [35] [310]

March 9

• At the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana, the Automated Transfer Vehicle is launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket into space. The unmanned European Space Agency cargo freighter is on a mission to resupply the International Space Station. [57] [310]

March 11

• At the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, US space shuttle Endeavour lifts off headed for the International Space Station. Its cargo includes part of a Japanese space laboratory and a Canadian-built robotic system. [35]

March 13

• A meteorite is videotaped hitting the Moon. [521]

March 19

• An exploding star halfway across the visible universe becomes the farthest known object ever visible to the naked eye. [310]

March 26

• US space shuttle Endeavour returns to Earth, landing at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission delivered the first part of the Japanese Kibo research laboratory and a Canadian maintenance robot to the International Space Station. Space station flight engineer Leopold Eyharts returned with the shuttle, after spending seven weeks setting up the Columbus lab. [35]

April 28

• India sets a world record by sending ten satellites into orbit in a single launch. [310]

May 14

• NASA announces the discovery of Supernova remnant G1.9+0.3. [310]

May 25

• NASA's Mars Phoenix lander touches down in the far north of Mars, sending back to Earth pictures of a region never previously seen up close. [57] [210.83] [310]

May 31

• NASA's Discovery space shuttle blasts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a 14-day mission to the International Space Station, delivering a cylinder for Japan's Kibo science lab, and also a new pump to repair the station's toilet. [57]

June 11

• The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope is launched. [310]

June 14

• The space shuttle Discovery returns to Earth after a 14-day mission, landing at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Among the returning is Garrett Reisman, after 95 days in space. [105]

June 20

• The Janus-2 satellite is launched from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, atop a Delta-2 rocket. The satellite will be used for measuring the shape of the world's oceans. [57]

August 18

• Russian Proton Breeze M rocket launches one of the biggest commercial satellites ever built - the Inmarsat-4 (I4-F3). The telecommunications satellite is 7m long, with a 9m wide antenna reflector. Inmarsat's network delivers high-speed mobile internet and phone services to users on land, at sea and in the air. [57]

September 17

• The International Astronomical Union classifies Haumea as the fifth dwarf planet in the Solar System. [310]

September 25

• From the Jiuquan spaceport in Gansu province, China launches the Shenzhou VII capsule atop a Long-March II-F rocket. This is China's third manned space mission, with astronauts Zhai Zhigang, Liu Boming, and Jing Haipeng. [5] [57] [310]

September 28

• China's Shenzhou VII space capsule returns to Earth after a successful mission orbiting the planet. The astronauts conducted experiments, and Zhia Zhigang made China's first space walk. [57] [518.62]
• Space X launches the Falcon 1 rocket into orbit, the first privately-developed liquid-fuel rocket into space, at a cost of under US$10 million. [275.86] [310]

October 6

• NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft makes its second of three flybys of Mercury, decreasing the velocity for orbital insertion on March 18, 2011. [310]

October 7

• The meteoroid 2008 TC3 impacts Earth, becoming the first such object to be discovered prior to impact. [310]

October 12

• The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. On board is US space tourist Richard Garriott, who paid about USS%15 million for the 10-day trip to the International Space Station. Richard's father, Owen Garriott, spent 60 days on a US space station in 1973. [57]

October 22

• India launches its first unmanned moon mission; the rocket is called Chandrayaan-1, and is being sent on a two-year mission to orbit the Moon. The rocket carries payloads from India, the USA, Germany, Britain, Sweden, and Bulgaria. [35] [276.96] [310] [524.46]

November 8

• India's Chandrayaan 1 spacecraft enters orbit of the Moon, the first Indian satellite to reach the Moon. [57]

November 14

• From Florida, NASA launches the space shuttle Endeavour, to continue construction of the International Space Station. [35] [310]

November 20

• An estimated 10-tonne object explodes in the atmosphere over Canadian provinces Alberta and Saskatchewan, landing south of Lone Rock, Saskatchewan. Within weeks, 130 stony meteorites (type H4), totalling 40 kg are recovered. [310] [561.9]

November 30

• The space shuttle Endeavour lands in California after a 16-day mission to renovate parts of the International Space Station. [105]

December 1

• A triangular conjunction formed by a new Moon, Venus and Jupiter is a prominent object in the evening sky. [310]

December 6

• The University of Hawaii activates a new telescope designed specifically to look for dangerous asteroids under 1km diameter. [340.100]

December 12

• The Moon moves into its nearest point to Earth, called perigee, at the same time as its fullest phase of the Lunar Cycle. The Moon appears to be 14 percent bigger and 30 percent brighter than the year's other full moons. [310]

2009

January 23

• Japan launches an H-2A rocket carrying eight satellites into space; one satellite is to monitor greenhouse gases over the Earth's surface. [35]

February 3

• Iran launches Omid, a domestically-made research and telecom satellite into orbit for the first time. [35]

February 10

• An American Iridium Satellite-operated communications satellite and the defunct Russian Cosmos-2251 military satellite collide at about 485 miles above the Russian Arctic, leaving a debris field of millions of pieces. This is the first publicly known satellite collision. [35] [316.A6] [398]

March 1

• Chinese lunar probe Chang'e 1 crashes into the moon in a controlled collision at the end of a 16-month moon-mapping mission. [57] [524.52]

March 7

• NASA launches from Cape Canaveral in Florida the unmanned Kepler telescope to orbit the Sun to search for Earth-like planets with the potential to host life. [57] [398]

March 15

• NASA launches space shuttle Discovery from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. [35]

March 17

• Space shuttle Discovery docks with the International Space Station, delivering the last set of solar wing panels. [35]

March 28

• NASA's space shuttle Discovery lands at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a 13-day mission to the International Space Station. [57] [336.A11]

March 31

• In Moscow, Russia, six volunteer "astronauts" are locked inside a mock spacecraft, to see if they can stand the simulated conditions of a manned flight to Mars, which would take over 100 days. Those who last more than 100 days experiencing the same isolation and claustrophobia as astronauts will earn a US$20,000 reward. [57]

April 8

• The NASA Kepler satellite begins its 3.5-year mission of taking pictures in the Cygnus-Lyra region of space, comprising about 4.5 million stars. Scientists will look for dips in starlight indicating passing planets in front of parent stars. [524.18]

May 11

• The NASA space shuttle Atlantis blasts off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center on a mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. [57]

May 14

• An Ariane 5 rocket blasts off from Kourou in French Guiana, carrying Europe's Herschel and Planck telescopes into space. The satellites will gather new insights into the nature of the cosmos. The combined program cost US$2.5 billion. [57]
• Astronauts from space shuttle Atlantis outfit the Hubble Space Telescope with a new wide field camera that will allow astronomers to capture images of objects formed as early as 500 million years after the birth of the universe. [35]

June 18

• America's NASA successfully launches two spacecraft to the Moon on missions to prepare for a return to the lunar surface by US astronauts. One mission will send a rocket crashing into the surface, so that the debris plume can be scanned for evidence of water. The other mission will help plan for future landing sites, and for construction of an outpost. [57] [398]

June 20

• Ground is broken in New Mexico, USA, on the construction site of Spaceport America, the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport. It will cost the New Mexico government almost US$200 million. [57]

July 1

• An Ariane 5 rocket launches from French Guiana, carrying TerreStar-1, the world's biggest commercial telecommunications satellite. The TerreStar Networks' satellite will provide voice, messaging and data connections to the North American market. [57]

July 15

• NASA space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission includes the last piece of Japan's Kibo laboratory, to be attached to the International Space Station during an 11-day stay. [35]

July 22

• The longest (6.5 minutes) total solar eclipse of the 21st century sweeps across a narrow (250km wide) swathe from India through to China. [35] [398] [562.171]

August 25

• South Korea launches its first space rocket, though a scientific satellite it was carrying failed to enter into its proper orbit. [57]

August 29

• NASA launches the US shuttle Discovery from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a mission to the International Space Station (ISS), with seven astronauts on board. [57]

September 11

• Japan successfully launches its new space freighter, 16.5-tonne unmanned H-II Transfer Vehicle, from the Tanegashima base in the south of the country, on a mission to re-supply the International Space Station. [57]
• The space shuttle Discovery lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California at the end of a two-week mission to the International Space Station. [35]

September 23

• India successfully launches an Oceansat-2 Indian remote-sensing satellite and six smaller foreign satellites in a single mission. [57]

October 9

• NASA intentionally crashes two unmanned spacecraft into the Moon in an attempt to detect water-ice. [57]

October 19

• European astronomers announce they have found 32 new planets orbiting stars outside our solar system bringing the total of known exoplanets to about 400. [35] [398]

October 28

• NASA launches a prototype Ares I-X rocket from Florida to test technology for the development of a future manned launch vehicle. The US$450 million launcher is the first NASA has built in more than 30 years. [57]

November 13

• NASA scientists announce that last month's experiment to find water on the Moon was a major success, revealing ice and water vapor in the debris field of smashing a rocket into a crater. [57] [398]

November 27

• Space shuttle Atlantis lands at its Florida home port, after completing an 11-day mission to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. [35]

December 14

• NASA launches the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer satellite on a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The satellite is designed to uncover hidden cosmic objects. [57]

December 16

• Astronomers discover GJ1214b, the first-known exoplanet on which water could exist. [398]

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