Shuttle Era
Columbia's first flight, Challenger and Columbia disasters, Hubble, Mir, the International Space Station. Mars rovers begin landing.
Part of Space
24 moments in this segment.
- — STS-1 (Columbia First Flight). First Space Shuttle mission. Young and Crippen. First time an unmanned spacecraft was flown crewed on its maiden voyage. Defined the next 30 years of US human spaceflight.
- — STS-7 (Sally Ride). First American woman in space. Sally Ride, 32, on Challenger's second flight. Came out posthumously in 2012 in her obituary; her surviving partner of 27 years acknowledged.
- — STS-9 / Spacelab 1. November 1983. First Spacelab mission — European Space Agency's pressurized lab module in the Shuttle's payload bay. Six crew including West German astronaut Ulf Merbold, the first non-American to fly on a US spacecraft.
- — STS-41-B (Untethered EVA). February 7, 1984. Bruce McCandless made the first untethered spacewalk using the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU). The "lone astronaut against the void" photograph is one of the most reproduced from the Shuttle era.
- — Mir Space Station. Launched February 20, 1986. Soviet (later Russian) space station — the first long-term continuous human presence in space. Hosted 104 crew members from 12 countries over 15 years. De-orbited 2001.
- — Challenger Disaster. January 28, 1986, 73 seconds after launch. Seven crew killed, including teacher Christa McAuliffe. Watched live by US schoolchildren. O-ring failure in the cold; the Rogers Commission report rewrote NASA's safety culture.
- — Magellan (Venus Radar Map). First successful Venus orbital mission. Used radar to map 98% of the surface through Venus's permanent cloud cover. Showed Venus has no plate tectonics and a young (~500M year) surface.
- — Galileo (Jupiter). Launched October 1989; arrived Jupiter 1995. Watched Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 hit Jupiter. Discovered evidence of subsurface ocean on Europa. Deliberately crashed into Jupiter 2003 to avoid contaminating Europa.
- — STS-71 (First Shuttle-Mir Docking). June 29, 1995. Atlantis docked with Mir — the first joining of US and Russian spacecraft since Apollo-Soyuz 20 years earlier. Created the largest spacecraft assembly at the time. Prelude to the ISS partnership.
- — Mars Pathfinder + Sojourner. First Mars rover. Bounced down in airbags. Sojourner rover the size of a microwave oven roamed for 83 sols. Pathfinder's website was one of the most-visited in 1997 — proved public appetite for Mars exploration.
- — Sojourner Rover. July 4, 1997. Part of Mars Pathfinder. First successful planetary rover of the modern era. Microwave-sized, six wheels, 83 sols of operations. The point at which Mars exploration became a public-engagement phenomenon.
- — STS-95 (Glenn at 77). October 29, 1998. John Glenn returned to space at age 77 — 36 years after his Friendship 7 orbit. Officially studied effects of spaceflight on the elderly; widely understood as a victory lap. Still the oldest person to reach orbit (until 2021).
- — ISS (First Module). Zarya, the first ISS module, launched November 20, 1998. ISS has been continuously crewed since November 2000 — the longest continuous human presence in space. Russian-American partnership that survived the post-Soviet decades.
- — Hayabusa (Itokawa). First mission to return a sample from an asteroid. JAXA. Touched down on asteroid Itokawa in 2005; returned to Earth 2010 with grains of dust. Hayabusa2 followed with a bigger sample from Ryugu (2020).
- — Columbia Disaster. February 1, 2003. Space Shuttle Columbia broke up during reentry; seven crew killed. Foam strike during launch had damaged the wing's thermal tiles. Effectively ended the Shuttle program — it flew only 22 more missions before retirement.
- — Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion. July 1, 2004. The first spacecraft to enter Saturn orbit. The Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) burn lasted 96 minutes, threading through the F and G rings. Began 13 years of Saturn science.
- — Cassini-Huygens. Cassini arrived Saturn 2004; Huygens probe landed on Titan January 2005 — the only landing on an outer-solar-system moon. Mission ended 2017 with a planned dive into Saturn's atmosphere.
- — Huygens Lands on Titan. January 14, 2005. The European Huygens probe parachuted through Titan's atmosphere and landed on its surface — the only landing in the outer solar system. Returned 350+ images during 2.5-hour descent + 72 minutes on the surface.
- — New Horizons (Pluto). Launched January 2006; flew past Pluto July 2015. Returned the first clear images of Pluto — heart-shaped Tombaugh Regio. Continued on to flyby of Kuiper Belt object Arrokoth in 2019.
- — Phoenix Mars Lander. First mission to confirm water ice on Mars by direct observation — scraped frozen water out of the regolith near the Martian north pole.
- — Dawn (Vesta + Ceres). September 2007. First spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies — asteroid Vesta (2011-2012) then dwarf planet Ceres (2015-2018). Used ion propulsion; demonstrated that single-spacecraft multi-target missions were feasible.
- — Kepler Space Telescope. Launched March 2009. Discovered 2,600+ confirmed exoplanets, proving most stars have planets. Showed that Earth-sized planets in habitable zones are common. Decommissioned 2018.
- — Hubble Space Telescope. Launched April 24, 1990. Discovered the mirror was flawed — out of focus for three years. Servicing Mission 1 (1993) fixed it. Still operating in 2024; has redefined cosmology four times over.
- — Spirit & Opportunity Rovers. Designed for 90-day missions. Spirit lasted 6 years; Opportunity 14 years (until a 2018 dust storm). Found definitive evidence of past liquid water on Mars. The 2003-2004 generation that rewrote what Mars exploration could be.
