NASA Timeline: Main Dates and Events
NASA Timeline: 1980 - The Solar Maximum Mission was launched on 14 February 1980 to study the Sun in detail.
NASA Timeline: 1981 - The first Space Shuttle Columbia flight was launched in April 1981.
NASA Timeline: 1982 - The Space Shuttle Columbia, launched November 11-16, 1982 in which the astronauts deployed two commercial communications satellites.
NASA Timeline: 1983 - The Space Shuttle Challenger was launched April 4-9 1983.
NASA Timeline: 1983 - Sally K. Ride became the first American women to fly in space on the seventh Space Shuttle STS-7 mission (June 18-24 1983) on the Space Shuttle Challenger.
NASA Timeline: 1983 - On August 30, 1983 Guion S. Bluford became the first African American astronaut on the Space Shuttle Challenger.
NASA Timeline: 1983 - On November 28, 1983 the Space Shuttle Columbia transported Spacelab 1, the first space laboratory.
NASA Timeline: 1984 - On January 25, 1984 President Ronald Reagan made the announcement to build a Space Station within a decade.
NASA Timeline: 1986 - On January 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger, STS-51L, was destroyed during its launch from the Kennedy Space Center. The terrible accident was witnessed as millions of people around the world saw the accident on television. Its crew of seven were all killed.
NASA Timeline: 1986 - The Mir space station was launched by the Soviet Union on February 19, 1986 was launched on February 19, 1986
NASA Timeline: 1989 - The NASA Magellan mission to Venus was launched on May 4, 1989 and arrived at Venus in September 1990. With the use of radar Magellan mapped 99% of the surface of the planet.
NASA Timeline: 1989 - President George H. W. Bush made a speech on July 20, 1989 announcing plans for the Space Exploration Initiative to send astronauts back to the Moon and to Mars. The mission failed to survive.
NASA Timeline: 1989 - The NASA Galileo spacecraft and probe was launched on 18 October 18, 1989 to begin a gravity assisted journey to Jupiter.
NASA Timeline: 1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope was launched from the Space Shuttle Columbia on April 24, 1990.
NASA Timeline: 1992 - First flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour May 2-16, 1992.
NASA Timeline: 1992 - The NASA Space Shuttle Endeavour was launched on December 2, 1993. The astronauts conducted a successful mission repairing the optics of the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA Timeline: 1994 - Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev became the first Russian to fly aboard a U.S. space shuttle (February 3-11, 1994) with American astronauts Charles F. Bolden and Kenneth S. Reightler, Jr.
NASA Timeline: 1995 - The NASA Space Shuttle Atlantis docked to the Mir Space Station (27 June – 7 July 1995). It was the first of nine Shuttle-Mir link ups between 1995 and 1998 that were to include docking procedures and crew transfers.
NASA Timeline: 1995 - On August 7, 1996 NASA announced that a team of its scientists uncovered evidence, but not conclusive proof, Â that microscopic life may have once existed on the planet Mars.
NASA Timeline: 1996 - On February 17, 1996, Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft became the first to orbit and land on an asteroid.
NASA Timeline: 1996 - The Mars Pathfinder, an American robotic spacecraft with a roving probe, was launched on a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral on  4 December 1996.
NASA Timeline: 1997 - On January 13, 1997 NASA scientists announced the discovery of three black holes in three different galaxies. Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope it was discovered that Black Holes once powered quasars (the nuclei of galaxies).
NASA Timeline: 1997 - NASA’s Earth Observing System launched a series of artificial satellite missions in Earth orbit designed for long-term global observations of the land surface, atmosphere, biosphere and oceans of the Earth.
NASA Timeline: 1997 - The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) spacecraft, a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), was launched on 27 November 1997 to monitor tropical rainfall
NASA Timeline: 1997 - The international Cassini space probe mission left Earth bound for Saturn on October 15, 1997
NASA Timeline: 1998 - Lunar Prospector was launched on January 6, 1998 for a one-year polar mission to explore the Moon for water and minerals.
NASA Timeline: 1998 - The first piece of the International Space Station was launched on November 20, 1998.
NASA Timeline: 1999 - The Stardust comet mission was robotic space probe launched on February 7, 1999 to collect dust samples from the comet Wild 2.
