Science
Famous Space Missions
Landmark space missions from the dawn of the Space Age to modern exploration, covering crewed flights, robotic probes, and orbital telescopes.
spacescienceexplorationNASAmissions
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Mission Name↕ | Agency↕ | Year↕ | Type↕ | Key Achievement↕ | Status↕ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sputnik 1 | Soviet Space Program | 1,957 | Satellite | First artificial satellite to orbit Earth | Completed |
| Mercury-Atlas 6 (Friendship 7) | NASA | 1,962 | Crewed Orbital | First American to orbit Earth (John Glenn) | Completed |
| Gemini 4 | NASA | 1,965 | Crewed Orbital | First American spacewalk (Ed White) | Completed |
| Apollo 11 | NASA | 1,969 | Crewed Lunar | First humans to walk on the Moon | Completed |
| Apollo 13 | NASA | 1,970 | Crewed Lunar | Successful failure — crew returned safely after oxygen tank explosion | Completed (aborted landing) |
| Pioneer 10 | NASA | 1,972 | Flyby Probe | First spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt and fly by Jupiter | Mission ended 2003 |
| Voyager 2 | NASA | 1,977 | Flyby Probe | Only spacecraft to visit all four outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) | Active (interstellar space) |
| Voyager 1 | NASA | 1,977 | Flyby Probe | Farthest human-made object from Earth; entered interstellar space in 2012 | Active (interstellar space) |
| Space Shuttle Columbia (STS-1) | NASA | 1,981 | Crewed Orbital | First orbital flight of the Space Shuttle program | Completed |
| Hubble Space Telescope | NASA / ESA | 1,990 | Space Telescope | Revolutionized astronomy with deep-field images and precise measurements | Active |
| Cassini-Huygens | NASA / ESA / ASI | 1,997 | Orbiter / Lander | Orbited Saturn for 13 years; Huygens landed on Titan | Completed (2017 Grand Finale) |
| ISS Assembly (Zarya module) | NASA / Roscosmos / ESA / JAXA / CSA | 1,998 | Space Station | Largest human-made structure in space; continuous habitation since 2000 | Active |
| Rosetta | ESA | 2,004 | Orbiter / Lander | First spacecraft to orbit and land on a comet (67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko) | Completed (2016) |
| New Horizons | NASA | 2,006 | Flyby Probe | First close-up images of Pluto and Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth | Active (extended mission) |
| Mars Curiosity Rover | NASA | 2,011 | Mars Rover | Found evidence of ancient habitable environment on Mars | Active |
| Chang'e 5 | CNSA | 2,020 | Lunar Sample Return | First lunar sample return mission since 1976; returned 1.73 kg of Moon rock | Completed |
| SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 | SpaceX / NASA | 2,020 | Crewed Orbital | First crewed orbital spaceflight by a commercial spacecraft | Completed |
| Perseverance Mars Rover | NASA | 2,020 | Mars Rover | Searching for signs of ancient microbial life; carried Ingenuity helicopter | Active |
| James Webb Space Telescope | NASA / ESA / CSA | 2,021 | Space Telescope | Most powerful space telescope; observing the earliest galaxies in infrared | Active |
| Chandrayaan-3 | ISRO | 2,023 | Lunar Lander / Rover | First successful landing near the lunar south pole | Completed |
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