On this day in space! July 17, 1962: X-15 breaks altitude record

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On July 17, 1962, the American test pilot Bob White broke the world record for the highest altitude flight.

On July 17, 1962, the American test pilot Bob White broke the world record for the highest altitude flight.

A photo from 1966 of the flight crew for the X-15 which was developed to provide data on aerodynamics, structures, flight controls and the physiological aspects of high speed, high altitude flight. (Image credit: NASA.)

He took off from Edwards Air Force Base in a rocket-powered X-15 aircraft and made it to an altitude of 314,750 feet. That's almost 60 miles!

At the time, the Air Force considered the edge of space to be 50 miles above the Earth. So White received astronaut wings for his record-breaking spaceflight.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos.