The following is a timeline of important events in the history of private spaceflight, including important technical as well as legislative and political advances.
Though the industry has its origins in the early 1960s, soon after the beginning of the Space Age, private companies did not begin conducting launches into space until the 1980s, and it was not until the 21st century that multiple companies began privately developing and operating launch vehicles and spacecraft in earnest.
Astronaut
Dale A. Gardner
holding a "For Sale" sign in 1984, referring to recovered non-functional private satellites (
Palapa B-2
and
Westar 6
, both were later successfully relaunched)
The continuous radio Morse message "hi hi hi ..." by the first private satellites called OSCAR, beginning with
OSCAR 1
in 1961 (recording from
OSCAR 2
, 1962)
Conestoga I prepared for launch
First launch of the Pegasus rocket, from a NASA-owned
B-52
.
Timeline of SpaceShipOne, SpaceShipTwo, CSXT and New Shepard sub-orbital flights. Where booster and capsule achieved different altitudes, the higher is plotted. In
the SVG file,
hover over a point to show details.
