Outer Solar System
Galileo at Jupiter, Cassini-Huygens at Saturn, New Horizons at Pluto. The generation that finished mapping the planets.
Part of Space
15 moments in this segment.
- — Rosetta / Philae (Comet Landing). November 12, 2014. The European Rosetta mission released the Philae lander onto Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — the first soft landing on a comet. Philae bounced twice into shadow and lasted only 60 hours, but Rosetta orbited 67P for over two years.
- — STS-135 (Last Shuttle Flight). July 8-21, 2011. Atlantis, the final Space Shuttle mission. Crew of four (smallest ever). Ended 30 years of US Shuttle operations; began the 9-year gap before US crewed launch capability returned with Crew Dragon Demo-2.
- — Juno at Jupiter. Arrived Jupiter July 4, 2016. Polar orbit; first probe to see Jupiter's poles. Solar-powered (no plutonium) at Jupiter distance — a first. Still operating in 2024.
- — Curiosity Rover. Landed August 6, 2012, with the sky-crane manoeuvre — the most complex landing ever attempted. Car-sized; nuclear powered. Still operating in 2024. Confirmed ancient Mars had habitable environments.
- — Dragon CRS-1 (First Commercial ISS). October 7, 2012. SpaceX Dragon's first contracted cargo delivery to the ISS — first commercial spacecraft to dock with the station. Inaugurated the post-Shuttle commercial-cargo era.
- — MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere). November 18, 2013. NASA's mission to study why Mars lost its atmosphere. Determined the solar wind has been stripping ~100g/s for billions of years — Mars's lack of a magnetic field is why.
- — Rosetta Comet Rendezvous. August 6, 2014. After a 10-year cruise, Rosetta became the first spacecraft to orbit a comet — 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Released the Philae lander three months later.
- — Falcon 9 First Landing. December 21, 2015. First time an orbital-class rocket booster landed back on Earth intact. SpaceX. The pivot moment from expendable to reusable launch — the rocket-economics revolution.
- — InSight (Mars Seismology). First seismometer on Mars. Detected ~1,300 marsquakes over four years before dust accumulation killed its solar panels in 2022. Internal-structure data revolutionised Mars geology.
- — Falcon Heavy / Starman. February 6, 2018. First flight of Falcon Heavy, then the most powerful operational rocket. Payload: Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster with a mannequin in a spacesuit, on a heliocentric orbit past Mars.
- — Parker Solar Probe. August 12, 2018. First spacecraft to "touch" the Sun — flew through the Sun's corona in 2021. Will reach 6.16 million km (closer than any human-made object) by 2024 perihelion. Fastest-moving human-made object: ~635,000 km/h.
- — Chang'e 4 (Far Side). First soft landing on the far side of the Moon. Chinese mission. Used the Queqiao relay satellite for communications. Confirmed water-ice in shadowed craters at the South Pole-Aitken Basin.
- — Crew Dragon Demo-2. May 30, 2020. SpaceX Demo-2 — first crewed orbital flight by a private company. Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the ISS. First US crewed launch since the Shuttle retired in 2011.
- — Chang'e 5 (Lunar Sample Return). November 23, 2020. China's Chang'e 5 returned 1.7 kg of lunar samples — the first lunar sample return since Luna 24 (1976). Made China the third country to return Moon rocks (after USSR and US).
- — Tianwen-1 + Zhurong. July 23, 2020. China's first independent Mars mission — orbiter + lander + rover (Zhurong). Successfully landed May 2021, making China the second country to operate a Mars rover. Zhurong drove ~2 km before going dormant in 2022.
