Loading…
Loading contentLoading…
Loading contentHumanity's journeys of exploration beyond Earth.
A NASA mission at the Sun–Earth L1 point that measures the solar wind and energetic particles upstream of Earth, giving roughly an hour of warning before disturbances reach the planet.
ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission — the original European orbiter half of the AIDA collaboration, meant to observe the DART impact in real time. It was not funded in 2016, but its science was largely revived and reshaped as the Hera mission.
Apollo 11 was the NASA mission that in July 1969 first landed humans on the Moon, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the lunar surface.
Apollo 13's planned lunar landing was aborted after an oxygen-tank explosion; the crew returned safely in a celebrated rescue.
Apollo 17 was the final crewed Apollo lunar landing, carrying the first scientist-astronaut to the Moon.
Apollo 8 was the first crewed mission to leave Earth orbit and orbit the Moon, returning the famous 'Earthrise' photograph.
Artemis I was the uncrewed first flight of the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft on a path around the Moon.
A NASA New Frontiers proposal to return a sample from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko — the comet Rosetta explored. It was a finalist in the New Frontiers 4 competition but was not selected (Dragonfly was chosen instead).
Cassini–Huygens was a NASA–ESA–ASI mission launched in 1997 that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017 and delivered the Huygens probe to the surface of its moon Titan.
Chandrayaan-1 was India's first lunar mission, whose instruments helped confirm water on the Moon.
Chandrayaan-3 achieved the first soft landing near the Moon's south pole, making India the fourth nation to land on the Moon.
Chang'e 4 achieved the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon.
Chang'e 5 returned the first lunar samples since the 1970s.
An ESA (with JAXA) fast-class mission that will wait at the Sun–Earth L2 point for a suitable target, then fly by a pristine, dynamically-new comet — ideally one entering the inner Solar System for the first time, or even an interstellar object.
Danuri, the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter, is South Korea's first mission to the Moon.
DART was the first planetary-defence test, deliberately impacting the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos to change its orbit.
Vesta & Ceres orbiter · NASA · launched 2007.
NASA's mission that fired a 370-kg impactor into comet Tempel 1 in 2005 to excavate and study the material beneath a comet's surface.
NASA's ion-propulsion technology demonstrator that flew past comet Borrelly in 2001, returning detailed images of its nucleus.
A JAXA technology-demonstration and flyby mission that will test advanced ion propulsion en route to a flyby of 3200 Phaethon — the rock-comet source of the Geminid meteor shower — studying its dust.
An early-2000s ESA planetary-defense concept — a two-spacecraft study in which an impactor (Hidalgo) would strike an asteroid while an orbiter (Sancho) measured the deflection. It was never built, but it prefigured the AIDA/DART–Hera approach.
A NOAA/NASA mission at the Sun–Earth L1 point that provides real-time solar-wind measurements for operational space-weather forecasting, along with full-disc images of Earth.
The Emirates Mars Mission, or Hope, is the United Arab Emirates' Mars orbiter, the Arab world's first interplanetary mission.
The extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft, which flew past the small, hyperactive comet Hartley 2 in 2010.
Europa Clipper will make dozens of flybys of Jupiter's moon Europa to assess its habitability.
Hayabusa was the first mission to return a sample from an asteroid, the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa.
Hayabusa2 collected surface and subsurface samples of the asteroid Ryugu and returned them to Earth.
ESA's planetary-defense mission to the Didymos–Dimorphos binary, launched in 2024 to survey the aftermath of NASA's DART impact in detail.
A NASA SIMPLEx pair of small spacecraft designed to fly by binary asteroids. Built to share Psyche's launch, the twins were left without a viable trajectory when Psyche slipped by a year, and the mission was cancelled with the spacecraft put into storage.
JUICE is ESA's mission to study Jupiter's icy moons Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.
Juno is a NASA space probe launched in 2011 that entered orbit around Jupiter in 2016 to study the planet's composition, gravity, and magnetic field.
Lucy is touring a record number of asteroids, including several of Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.
Luna 17 delivered Lunokhod 1, the first robotic rover to operate on the surface of another world.
First lunar impact · USSR · launched 1959.
Luna 9 achieved the first soft landing on the Moon and returned the first images from the lunar surface.
Venus orbiter · NASA · launched 1989.
Venus & Mercury flyby · NASA · launched 1973.
Mars rover mission (Perseverance) · NASA · launched 2020.
Mars orbiter · ESA · launched 2003.
Mangalyaan made India the first nation to reach Mars orbit on its first attempt.
Mars Pathfinder landed using airbags and deployed Sojourner, the first wheeled rover on Mars.
Mars Science Laboratory is the NASA mission that delivered the Curiosity rover to Mars in 2012 to investigate the planet's climate and geology.
MAVEN studies how Mars lost much of its atmosphere to space over billions of years.
Mercury orbiter · NASA · launched 2004.
JAXA's planned mission to the moons of Mars — it will study Phobos and Deimos and return a sample of Phobos to Earth, testing whether the Martian moons are captured asteroids or debris from a giant impact.
NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid (433 Eros, 2000) and the first to soft-land on one (2001).
New Horizons is a NASA space probe launched in 2006 that performed the first close flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015.
Parker Solar Probe is a NASA spacecraft launched in 2018 to fly through the Sun's outer atmosphere, making the closest approaches to the Sun of any spacecraft.
Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt and fly past Jupiter.
Pioneer 11 flew past Jupiter and became the first spacecraft to encounter Saturn.
Psyche is travelling to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche to study a possible exposed planetary core.
A NASA mission that images the Sun in many ultraviolet wavelengths at high cadence, studying solar activity, flares, and the magnetic field that drives space weather.
A joint ESA/NASA solar observatory at the Sun–Earth L1 point, operating since 1995. Its coronagraphs image coronal mass ejections and it is a workhorse of space-weather monitoring (and a prolific comet discoverer).
Solar observatory · ESA / NASA · launched 2020.
Spirit was one of NASA's twin Mars Exploration Rovers, exploring Gusev crater.
Sputnik 1 was the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union and opening the Space Age.
NASA's sample-return mission that captured dust from the coma of comet Wild 2 and returned it to Earth in 2006, and later flew past Tempel 1 as Stardust-NExT.
Venera 7 made the first soft landing on another planet and the first transmission from the surface of Venus.
Venus Express was ESA's first mission to Venus, studying its dense atmosphere from orbit.
Mars orbiter & lander · NASA · launched 1975.
Viking 2 was the second Viking orbiter–lander pair, landing in Utopia Planitia on Mars.
Voskhod 2 was the mission on which Alexei Leonov performed the first spacewalk.
Vostok 1 carried Yuri Gagarin on the first human spaceflight, a single orbit of the Earth.
Vostok 6 carried Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space.
Voyager 1 is a NASA space probe launched in 1977 that explored Jupiter and Saturn and has since become the most distant human-made object, traveling in interstellar space.
Voyager 2 is a NASA space probe launched in 1977 and the only spacecraft to have flown past all four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.