NASA Is Celebrating It's 50th Birthday!

Here are the 10 firsts from NASA's first 50 years:

(Someone please forward this to Sarah Palin as she desperately needs the info. and an education on the world in general!)

1. 1961: First American in space - John GlennJohn Glenn made America's first orbital flight weeks after the Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin orbited Earth to become the first human in space.

2. 1965: First U.S. spacewalk - Astronaut Ed White floated out the hatch of the Gemini 4 capsule on June 3, 1965

3. 1967: First NASA tragedy - America’s first space tragedy occurred right here on Earth. Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were running through training exercises atop a NASA launch pad in Florida when an accidental fire ripped through the Apollo 1 spacecraft. Unable to escape, the three men died from smoke inhalation, delivering a tremendous setback to the space agency's moon program.

4. 1969 (July 20): First moon landing - America overtook the Soviet Union in the space race when Neil ArmstrongNeil Armstrong climbed out of the Eagle lunar module and onto the lunar surface and uttered the famous words heard around the world: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind." Buzz AldrinBuzz Aldrin then joined him on the lunar surface.

5. 1973: First U.S. space station - The Soviets beat the U.S. in the race to put a science lab in space with the launch of Salyut 1 in 1971, but NASA followed with Skylab in 1973.

6. 1976: First U.S. probe on Mars - The Viking landers touched down on the surface of Mars in the summer of 1976 and opened the world's eyes to another planet.

7. 1981: First space shuttle flight - Commander John Young and pilot Robert Crippen opened a new era of human spaceflight at NASA with the successful launch of space shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

8. 1990: First light for Hubble - April 25, 1990, was the day the space shuttle gave space science one of its biggest gifts: deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope. However, scientists soon learned the telescope's main mirror was flawed, providing out-of-focus images of outer space. Within 3 years NASA launched a rescue mission that proved successful.

9. 1997: First road trip on Mars - NASA's Mars Sojourner rover, part of the Mars Pathfinder mission, was the first robotic rover to roll on the Red Planet.

10. 2000: First crew for international space station - On Nov. 2, 2000, a Soyuz spacecraft delivered two Russians and an American commander to the international space station, launching an ongoing permanent human presence in space.

Source: MSN