The eighties saw the first American woman in space (Sally Ride in 1983), the first un-tethered space walks (Bruce McCandless and Robert Stewart in 1984), a visit to Uranus (Voyager 2 in 1986), the first continuously inhabited space station (Mir in 1987), and the first glimpses of Neptune (Voyager 2 in 1989).

On April 2, 1984, 35-year-old Wing Commander Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian and 138th man to visit space, launched along with two other Soviet cosmonauts aboard the Soyuz T-11.

On April 25, 1990, Astronauts on the shuttle Discovery placed the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. However, astronomers soon realized its mirror had the wrong shape. Three years later, astronauts captured Hubble and successfully repaired its optics.

In 1995, on March 22, Valery Polyakov returned to Earth after spending a record 437 days and 18 hours in space aboard Mir. In December that year, the Galileo probe reached Jupiter after a six-year journey. The Sojourner rover landed on Mars in 1997. A year later, the first piece of the International Space Station was launched.