A History of Space Missions

Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space aboard a 15-minute suborbital flight.

John Glenn becomes the first American to orbit the Earth, circling the planet three times.

The first spacecraft to fly by Mars and return close-up photographs of another planet.

Ed White performs the first American spacewalk, floating free for 23 minutes.

Neil Armstrong and David Scott achieve the first docking of two spacecraft in orbit.

The first humans to leave Earth orbit and circle the Moon, capturing the iconic Earthrise photograph.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin become the first humans to walk on the Moon.

An oxygen tank explosion turns a Moon landing into a legendary rescue of three astronauts.

The first spacecraft to cross the asteroid belt and fly past Jupiter.

The final Apollo Moon landing carries the first scientist-astronaut to the lunar surface.

America’s first space station hosts three crews and proves humans can live in space for months.

The first international human spaceflight: an American Apollo docks with a Soviet Soyuz.

The first fully successful Mars landing returns years of images and searches for life.

The only spacecraft to visit all four giant planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

The most distant human-made object, first to enter interstellar space.

The Space Shuttle’s daring first flight: the first crewed test of a reusable winged spacecraft.

The Challenger disaster claims seven lives and forces a reckoning in spaceflight safety culture.

Radar mapping strips away the clouds of Venus to reveal a world of volcanoes and lava plains.

The first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter discovers evidence of an ocean inside Europa.

The telescope that rewrote astronomy, saved in orbit by five servicing missions.

Airbags bounce a lander onto Mars carrying Sojourner, the first rover on another planet.

Thirteen years at Saturn, and the first landing on a moon of another planet.

The first resident crew boards the International Space Station, beginning 25+ years of continuous human presence in orbit.

A 90-day rover mission that lasted six years and found evidence of ancient hot springs on Mars.

The record-breaking rover drives a marathon across Mars over nearly 15 years.

The infrared Great Observatory peers through cosmic dust and studies distant exoplanets.

The fastest launch in history delivers the first close-up look at Pluto.

A polar lander digs into the Martian arctic and touches water ice for the first time.

The planet hunter that proved planets outnumber stars in our galaxy.

A solar-powered spacecraft dives through Jupiter’s radiation belts to probe its hidden interior.

A car-sized nuclear-powered rover lands via sky crane and proves ancient Mars was habitable.

An orbiter solves the mystery of how Mars lost its atmosphere to the solar wind.

A seven-year round trip brings back pristine samples of asteroid Bennu.

A seismometer on the Martian plains listens to marsquakes and maps the planet’s interior.

The fastest human-made object flies through the Sun’s atmosphere.

A sample-caching rover and the first aircraft to fly on another planet.

Humanity’s first planetary defense test successfully changes an asteroid’s orbit.

The most powerful space telescope ever built unfolds a million miles from Earth.

The Space Launch System and Orion fly a shakedown cruise around the Moon.

The largest planetary spacecraft NASA has ever built heads for Jupiter’s ocean moon.