NASA
60 missions
Apollo 11
First humans on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Eagle on July 20, 1969 while Mic...
Apollo 13
An oxygen tank exploded 200,000 miles from Earth. The famous words Houston, we have had a problem. T...
Mercury-Atlas 6
John Glenn became the first American to orbit Earth on February 20, 1962. Completed three orbits in ...
Gemini 4
Ed White performed the first American spacewalk on June 3, 1965. He was so reluctant to return that ...
Apollo 1
A cabin fire during a launch rehearsal killed astronauts Grissom, White, and Chaffee on January 27, ...
Voyager 1
Launched September 5, 1977, still transmitting after 48 years. The most distant human-made object, o...
Voyager 2
Launched 16 days before Voyager 1 but on a slower path. The only spacecraft to visit Uranus and Nept...
New Horizons
First spacecraft to visit Pluto, arriving July 14, 2015. Launched at 58,000 km/h, the fastest spacec...
Mars Curiosity Rover
Landed using the sky crane maneuver, lowering on cables from a rocket platform. Nuclear-powered, sti...
Mars Perseverance Rover
Landed February 18, 2021 in Jezero Crater, an ancient lakebed. Carries Ingenuity, the first helicopt...
Ingenuity
A technology demonstrator that was supposed to fly 5 times. Ended up completing 72 flights over 3 ye...
Space Shuttle Challenger
Exploded 73 seconds after launch on January 28, 1986, killing all 7 crew. Caused by an O-ring failur...
Space Shuttle Columbia
A piece of foam struck the wing during launch, creating a hole. During reentry on February 1, 2003, ...
Skylab
Americas first space station, made from a Saturn V third stage. Lost its meteoroid shield and solar ...
Mariner 4
Returned the first close-up images of Mars, 22 photos. Shattered hopes of finding canals or civiliza...
Mariner 9
The first spacecraft to orbit another planet. Arrived during a global dust storm that hid the entire...
Viking 1
First successful Mars lander, touching down July 20, 1976. Operated for over 6 years, far exceeding ...
Spirit and Opportunity
Twin rovers designed for 90-day missions. Spirit lasted 6 years until stuck in sand. Opportunity las...
Pioneer 10
First spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt. First to fly by Jupiter in 1973, returning the first...
Pioneer 11
First to fly by Saturn in 1979. Used Jupiters gravity to slingshot to Saturn. Discovered an addition...
Galileo
First spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. Dropped a probe into Jupiters atmosphere that survived 58 minutes...
Juno
Entered Jupiter orbit on July 4, 2016. Studies Jupiters atmosphere, magnetic field, and interior. Di...
Magellan
Mapped 98% of Venus surface using radar, penetrating the thick clouds. Revealed a young surface with...
MESSENGER
First spacecraft to orbit Mercury. Confirmed water ice in permanently shadowed craters at the poles....
Dawn
First spacecraft to orbit two bodies beyond Earth. Visited asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres. Di...
OSIRIS-REx
Collected a sample from asteroid Bennu and returned it to Earth in September 2023. The sample capsul...
Ranger 7
Returned the first close-up photographs of the Moon, 4,316 images in 17 minutes before impact. The p...
Surveyor 1
First American soft landing on the Moon, June 2, 1966, just 4 months after Luna 9. Returned over 11,...
Kepler
Discovered over 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, about 70% of all known. Found that there are more planet...
TESS
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite scans the entire sky. Found over 7,000 candidate exoplanet...
Parker Solar Probe
The closest any human-made object has been to the Sun, within 6 million km. Survives temperatures ov...
Deep Impact
Fired a 370 kg copper projectile into comet Tempel 1. The impact excavated a crater and ejected mate...
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
The highest-resolution camera ever sent to another planet, HiRISE. Has taken over 400,000 images. Ca...
LCROSS
Intentionally crashed a spent rocket stage into a permanently shadowed lunar crater. The plume of de...
Mars Insight
Designed to study the interior of Mars. Detected the first marsquakes. Discovered that the Martian c...
Double Asteroid Redirection Test
Intentionally crashed into asteroid moon Dimorphos at 22,500 km/h. Changed its orbit by 32 minutes, ...
Europa Clipper
Designed to investigate whether Jupiters moon Europa could support life. Will make 49 close flybys w...
Artemis I
An uncrewed test flight of the Space Launch System and Orion capsule. Traveled 432,000 km from Earth...
Apollo 8
The first crewed mission to leave Earth orbit and reach the Moon. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill...
Apollo 12
The second crewed Moon landing, in November 1969. Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed within walking di...
Apollo 15
The first advanced J mission with a lunar rover. Dave Scott and Jim Irwin spent 3 days on the Moon a...
Apollo 17
The final Apollo mission and the last time humans walked on the Moon. Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmi...
Mercury-Redstone 3
Alan Shepard became the first American in space on May 5, 1961, just 23 days after Gagarin. The flig...
Gemini 8
Neil Armstrong and David Scott performed the first docking in orbit, linking with an Agena target ve...
Space Shuttle Columbia STS-1
The first flight of the Space Shuttle, on April 12, 1981, exactly 20 years after Gagarin. John Young...
Mars Pathfinder
Landed with giant airbags on July 4, 1997, bouncing a dozen times before stopping. Deployed Sojourne...
Phoenix Mars Lander
Landed in the Martian arctic in May 2008 to dig into water ice. Its robotic arm touched ice just cen...
Lunar Prospector
A low cost orbiter that mapped the composition of the entire Moon. Found hydrogen at both poles, str...
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Has circled the Moon since 2009 making its most detailed maps. Its camera resolved the Apollo descen...
GRAIL
Twin craft named Ebb and Flow mapped the lunar gravity field in fine detail. They flew in formation,...
Stardust
Flew through the coma of comet Wild 2 at 6 km per second, catching dust in blocks of aerogel. Return...
Genesis
Collected solar wind particles at the L1 point for over two years. The sample capsule crashed in Uta...
NEAR Shoemaker
The first spacecraft to orbit and land on an asteroid. Mapped the peanut shaped Eros for a year from...
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The most powerful X-ray telescope ever flown, launched under the first woman shuttle commander, Eile...
Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
The second of the NASA Great Observatories. Detected thousands of gamma ray bursts from every direct...
Spitzer Space Telescope
The fourth Great Observatory, seeing the universe in infrared light. Discovered a vast faint ring ar...
COBE
Detected faint temperature ripples in the cosmic microwave background, the seeds of all galaxies. Th...
Psyche
A mission to a metal rich asteroid believed to be the exposed core of a shattered early planet. If r...
Lucy
The first mission to the Trojan asteroids, two swarms of primitive bodies sharing the orbit of Jupit...
Dragonfly
A nuclear powered drone that will fly through the thick atmosphere of Titan, a moon of Saturn. The f...