Past Missions
* Mission list begins with the earliest launch.

Explorer 1-5 Launches: January-August, 1958    Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States on January 31, 1958. Explorer 2 was launched on March 5, 1958. Explorer 3 was successfully launched on March 26, 1958. Explorer 4 was launched July 26, 1958. Launch of Explorer 5 was on August 24, 1958.

Pioneer 3-4 Launches: December 6, 1958; March 3, 1959    Pioneer 3 and 4 were early satellites designed to be lofted toward the Moon. Because of a slight error, Pioneer 3 did not reach the Moon; instead it achieved a peak altitude of 102,320 kilometers (63,580 miles).

Rangers to the Moon Launches: 1961-65    The Ranger project of the 1960s was the first U.S. effort to launch probes directly toward the Moon. The craft were designed to relay pictures and other data as they approached the Moon and finally crash-landed into its surface. Although the first attempts failed, the later Ranges were a complete success.

Surveyors to the Moon Launches: 1966-68    The Surveyor missions were the first U.S. effort to make a soft landing on the Moon. Most were successful and the Surveyor series acquired almost 90,000 images.

Mariner 1-2 to Venus Launches: July 22 and August 27, 1962    Mariner 2, developed to fly by Venus, studied the planet's atmosphere and surface. During its journey to Venus, the craft measured for the first time solar wind.

Mariner 3-4 to Mars Launches: November 5 and 28, 1964     Mariner 4 carried out the first flyby of Mars and collected the first close-up photographs of another planet.

Mariner 5 to Venus Launch: June 4, 1967    Mariner 5 flew within 4,000 kilometers (approximately 2,500 miles) of Venus

Mariner 6-7 to Mars Launches: February 24 and March 27, 1969    Mariner 6 and 7 completed the first dual mission to Mars, flying by over the equator and south polar regions and analyzing the Martian atmosphere and surface with remote sensors.

Mariner 8-9 to Mars Launches: May 8 and 30, 1971    Mariner 9 was the first artificial satellite of Mars and orbited the planet for nearly a year.

Mariner 10 to Venus and Mercury Launch: November 3, 1973    With the scorched inner planet of Mercury as its ultimate target, the Mariner 10 spacecraft pioneered the use of a (gravity assist) swing by Venus to bend its flight path.

Viking to Mars Launches: August 20 and September 9, 1975    The Viking Project was the first mission to land a spacecraft safely on the surface of Mars. Two identical spacecraft each had an orbiter and a lander; both orbiter-lander pairs successfully studied Mars.

Infrared Astronomical Satellite Launch: January 25, 1983    This satellite put an infrared telescope in orbit above the interference of Earth's atmosphere. The mission had many unexpected discoveries, including the discovery of solid material around the stars Vega and Fomalhaut.

Magellan to Venus Launch: May 4, 1989    Magellan orbited Venus and mapped 99 percent of its surface.

Galileo to Jupiter Launch: October 18, 1989    The Galileo spacecraft has been orbiting Jupiter since December, 1995. En route to the planet, the craft encountered asteroids and a comet. The mission ended on Sept. 21, 2003, when the spacecraft plunged into Jupiter's atmosphere.

Mars Observer Launch: September 25, 1992    After a 17-year gap since its last mission to the red planet, the United States launched Mars Observer on September 25, 1992.

Mars Global Surveyor Launch: November 7, 1996    Mars Global Surveyor operated longer at Mars than any other spacecraft in history, and for more than four times as long as the prime mission originally planned. The spacecraft returned detailed information that has overhauled understanding about Mars.

Mars Pathfinder Launch: December 4, 1996    Mars Pathfinder, consisting of a lander and the Sojourner rover, both returned an unprecedented amount of data and outlived their primary design lives.

Deep Space 1 Launch: October 24, 1998    Deep Space 1, a spacecraft built to test new technologies in space, successfully completed its primary mission. On an extended mission, it flew past comet Borrelly in September 2001, taking the best ever images of a comet's nucleus.

Mars Climate Orbiter Launch: December 11, 1998    Mars Climate Orbiter was designed to function as an interplanetary weather satellite and a communications relay for Mars Polar Lander.

Mars Polar Lander/Deep Space 2 Launch: January 3, 1999    Mars Polar Lander was an ambitious mission to set a spacecraft down on the frigid terrain near the edge of Mars' south polar cap and dig for water ice with a robotic arm.

Stardust Launch: February 7, 1999    The Stardust spacecraft flew through the cloud of dust that surrounds the nucleus of comet Wild-2 and, for the first time ever, brought cometary material back to Earth. The Stardust return capsule landed in January 2006 carrying the collected particles.

Genesis Launch Date: August 8, 2001    Genesis collected samples of charged particles in the solar wind and returned them to Earth in September 2004. Although the capsule's parachutes did not deploy, scientists expect to be able to achieve most of their science objectives with samples recovered from the capsule.

Deep Impact Launch: Jan. 12, 2005     Deep Impact traveled to comet Tempel 1 and deployed an impactor that was essentially "run over" by the nucleus of Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005.

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