The 2000s
22 missions
New Horizons
First spacecraft to visit Pluto, arriving July 14, 2015. Launched at 58,000 km/h, the fastest spacec...
Space Shuttle Columbia
A piece of foam struck the wing during launch, creating a hole. During reentry on February 1, 2003, ...
Spirit and Opportunity
Twin rovers designed for 90-day missions. Spirit lasted 6 years until stuck in sand. Opportunity las...
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...
Rosetta
First spacecraft to orbit a comet. Its Philae lander bounced and landed on its side in a shadow, lim...
Kepler
Discovered over 2,600 confirmed exoplanets, about 70% of all known. Found that there are more planet...
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...
SpaceShipOne
First privately funded spacecraft to reach space. Won the 10 million dollar Ansari X Prize. Designed...
Phoenix Mars Lander
Landed in the Martian arctic in May 2008 to dig into water ice. Its robotic arm touched ice just cen...
Mars Express
The first European mission to another planet, in orbit since December 2003. Its radar detected what ...
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Has circled the Moon since 2009 making its most detailed maps. Its camera resolved the Apollo descen...
Chandrayaan-1
The first Indian mission to the Moon, launched October 2008. Its impact probe struck near the south ...
Hayabusa
The first mission to return material from an asteroid, though it nearly failed completely. Suffered ...
Genesis
Collected solar wind particles at the L1 point for over two years. The sample capsule crashed in Uta...
Spitzer Space Telescope
The fourth Great Observatory, seeing the universe in infrared light. Discovered a vast faint ring ar...
Planck
Mapped the afterglow of the Big Bang with record precision. Fixed the age of the universe at 13.8 bi...
Shenzhou 5
Carried Yang Liwei, the first Chinese astronaut, on October 15, 2003. Made China the third country t...
Kaguya
The most advanced lunar orbiter of its generation. Its HDTV cameras filmed the Earth rising over the...
Venus Express
The first European mission to Venus, in orbit from 2006 to 2014. Studied the runaway greenhouse atmo...