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.
10 July 1962 –
Telstar 1, the first satellite to be used commercially, is launched on the first commercially sponsored space launch, aboard a
Thor-Delta rocket.[2]
31 August 1962 – President
John F. Kennedy signs the
Communications Satellite Act of 1962 providing the regulatory framework for private companies in the United States to own and operate their own satellites.
6 April 1965 –
IntelsatIntelsat 1 known as "Early Bird" was the first commercial communications satellite to be placed in geosynchronous orbit.
9 November 1972 – Canadian
TelesatAnik A1 launched world's first domestic communications satellite in geostationary orbit operated by a commercial company.
13 April 1974 –
Western UnionWestar 1 becomes America's first domestic and commercially launched geostationary communications satellite.
1975 –
OTRAG, the first company to attempt private development and manufacture of space propulsion systems, is founded in
Stuttgart, Germany, though its program is ultimately abandoned in the early 1980s.[3]
15 June 1988 –
PanAmSatPAS-1 becomes the first privately owned international telecommunications satellite.
29 March 1989 – Starfire, a repurposed
Black Brantsounding rocket launched by Space Services Inc., is the first rocket to launch with a commercial
launch license from the Office of Commercial Space Transportation.[10]
1990s
5 April 1990 –
Pegasus, an
air launched rocket developed by
Orbital Sciences Corporation becomes the first launch vehicle fully developed by a private company to reach space, as well as the first air launched rocket of any kind to reach orbit[11]
16 November 1992 –
Space Flight Europe-America 500, an orbital mission consisting of a space capsule bearing gifts from Russia to the United States, is launched by the Russian company
TsSKB-Progress aboard a
Soyuz rocket, before landing six days later off the coast of
Grays Harbor in the United States.[12]
November 1995 – The Office of Commercial Space Transportation is transferred to the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), becoming the FAA Associate Administrator for Space Transportation, or FAA/AST.[10]
24 December 1997 –
DigitalGlobe EarlyBird-1 becomes the first commercial Earth imaging satellite.
13 May 1998–
HGS-1, a communications satellite operated at the time by Hughes Global Services Inc., becomes the first commercial spacecraft to visit the Moon, after flying to within 6,200 km of the lunar surface on a
free return trajectory to salvage it from an unusable orbit.[13][14]
2000s
4 April 2000 –
Soyuz TM-30, a crewed mission to the space station
Mir arranged by the company
MirCorp in collaboration with the
Russian Federal Space Agency, launches, becoming the first privately funded space station expedition.[15]
17 May 2004 – The
Civilian Space eXploration Team (CSXT) becomes the first
amateur organization to send a rocket into space, with the launch of their "GoFast" rocket to 116 km (72 miles) altitude.[17]
23 December 2004 – President
George W. Bush signs the
Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004, which provides a basic legal framework for commercial human spaceflight.[19] It also creates the so-called "learning period," a temporary restriction on the FAA's ability to regulate the private spaceflight industry, which has since been extended multiple times.[20]
28 September 2008 –
SpaceX conducts the first successful launch of its
Falcon 1 rocket, the first privately developed fully
liquid fueled rocket to reach orbit.[22]
2010s
8 December 2010 – SpaceX successfully launches and recovers its
Dragon capsule on its
first mission, marking the first time a privately developed and operated spacecraft is recovered from orbit.[23]
May–July 2014 – A private initiative known as the ISEE-3 Reboot Project successfully contacts and takes control of NASA's defunct
ISEE-3 space probe with support from NASA and the
Arecibo Observatory, making them the first private group to command a spacecraft in deep space, though their plans to change the probe's orbit are abandoned weeks later when its thrusters fail to respond properly.[24][25]
23 October 2014 –
LuxSpace, an aerospace contractor based in
Luxembourg, launches the
Manfred Memorial Moon Mission (4M), the first commercial payload sent to fly by the Moon, attached to the third stage of the rocket that lifted Chinese lunar flyby spacecraft
Chang'e 5-T1.[26]
23 November 2015 –
Blue Origin successfully launches its
New Shepard launch system into space and lands it vertically, making it the first
VTVL rocket to land on Earth from space.[27]
21 December 2015 – SpaceX lands the first stage of its
Falcon 9 rocket at
Landing Zone 1 at
Cape Canaveral, marking the first recovery of a
VTVL stage from an orbital rocket.[28]
22 January 2016–
Blue Origin successfully launches and lands the same
New Shepard booster flown in November, making it the first VTVL rocket to reach space twice.[29]
30 March 2017– SpaceX successfully
launches and lands the
first stage of a Falcon 9 that had previously flown in April 2016, making it the first VTVL rocket to be used on two orbital flights.[30]
21 January 2018 – American aerospace company
Rocket Lab successfully launched its
Electron rocket from
Mahia Launch Center on January 21, 2018 carrying three
CubeSats into low Earth orbit. This was the first time that a rocket entered orbit after launching from a privately owned and operated spaceport.
2020s
30 May 2020– SpaceX successfully launches a Falcon 9 rocket carrying the
Crew Dragon space capsule during the
Demo-2 mission, marking the first privately-developed crewed mission to orbit and first to visit the ISS.
11 July 2021– Virgin Galactic successfully launches
Richard Branson on a
SpaceShipTwo to space, marking the first privately-developed crewed mission to space carrying a founder of a space company. It however did not reach the Karman Line.
20 July 2021– Blue Origin successfully launches Jeff Bezos on a New Shepard rocket to space above the
Karman Line, marking the first privately-developed crewed mission to space with a company founder to get above the Karman Line. The mission also launched the first person born in the 21st century in space and first teenager in space (
Oliver Daemen).[33]
16 September 2021– SpaceX operates the
Inspiration4 mission, the first orbital spaceflight with only private citizens aboard.[34]
8 April 2022–
Axiom Mission 1 by
Axiom Space is the first wholly commercially-operated crewed mission to the International Space Station.
20 April 2023 –
SpaceX launches Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket to date, with twice the thrust of the
Saturn V. It however fails 4 minutes into flight.[35]
21 May 2023–
Axiom Mission 2 marks the first time a commercially operated crewed mission was used to fly government astronauts as well as being the first private mission with a female commander.
22 February 2024-
IM-1 Odysseus marks the first successful private lunar landing and the first to do so with
cryogenicpropellants.[36]
^
Jaeger, Ralph-W.; Claudon, Jean-Louis (May 1986). Ariane — The first commercial space transportation system. Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Space Technology and Science. Vol. 2. Tokyo, Japan: AGNE Publishing, Inc. (published 1986).
Bibcode:
1986spte.conf.1431J. A87-32276 13–12.
^Davenport, Christian (15 September 2021).
"SpaceX makes history by launching Inspiration4, first all-civilian crew, to orbit". The Washington Post.
Archived from the original on 16 September 2021. Retrieved 16 September 2021. The Inspiration4 mission may be the first time a spaceflight crew is comprised entirely of civilians – nongovernment astronauts. There has been a long history of ordinary citizens going to space. In fact, that was NASA's goal at the beginning of the space shuttle era – to fly regular people on a routine basis