First man-made object to enter space
- Who
- V-2 rocket
- What
- First
- Where
- Germany
- When
- 20 June 1944
The boundary of space is known as the Kármán Line, after Theodore von Kármán (USA), who realized that the altitude of 100 km above sea level is the height at which a vehicle would need to travel at faster than orbital velocity in order to gain enough aerodynamic lift to sustain flight. On 20 June 1944, a test flight of a German V-2 missile, designed to strike London, UK, reached an altitude of 174.6 km.