-- 1st century AD: A simple explosive substance appears in China. To create a festive effect, containers filled with it are believed to have been thrown onto fires, whereupon they sometimes flew up into the air.

-- 1232: The first documented use of "fire-sticks" as weapons -- by Chinese forces repelling a Mongol invasion.

-- 17th century: The Italian scientist Galileo explains the movement of heavenly bodies; building on his work the British physicist Isaac Newton deduces the laws of gravity.

-- 1926: The US scientist Robert Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket, with the potential to fly in space.

-- Oct 1957: The Soviet Union launches the first space satellite, Sputnik-1, causing shock in the United States. Two months later a second such device carries a dog, Laika, into space.

-- 1958: First US satellite. Creation of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

-- April 1961: First manned orbital flight, by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Two months later, the US astronaut Alan Shepard makes his country's first manned venture, a suborbital flight.

US president John F. Kennedy vows to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade.

-- 1962: First orbital flight by an American, John Glenn.

-- 1968: The US sends a manned spacecraft, Apollo 8, round the Moon and back.

-- 1969: Apollo 11 becomes the first manned craft to land on the Moon. Astronaut Neil Armstrong takes "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

-- 1971: The Soviet Union creates the first manned space station.

-- 1973: NASA launches its own orbiting station, Skylab.

-- 1975: Creation of the European Space Agency, which develops the Ariane rocket.

-- 1981: Maiden flight of a US space shuttle, the first reuseable manned vehicle.

-- 1986: The explosion of the Challenger shuttle puts the US program on hold.

-- 1997: India launches its first operational satellite.

-- 1998: Work starts on the first International Space Station.

-- 2001: American businessman Dennis Tito becomes the first space tourist, paying some 20 million dollars for a seat on a Russian rocket. Three men and one woman have since followed in his path.

The Soviet space station Mir is allowed to burn up after 15 years.

-- 2003: Second fatal explosion of a US space shuttle, the Columbia.

First manned flight by a Chinese spacecraft.

-- 2004: US President George W. Bush announces plans to send manned craft back to the Moon by 2020, and to make trips from there to the planet Mars. The program is named Constellation by NASA.

-- 2005: US shuttle flights resume.

-- September 24, 2008: Chinese astronauts prepare for a new manned mission.

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