Top 10 Key Space Missions | World General Knowledge Series
Since Russia’s Sputnik 1 satellite entered space on 4 October 1957, thousands of spacecraft – including Earth satellites and deep-space probes – have launched into the cosmos.
Over the last 6 decades, space travel has come on leaps and bounds, with the development of liquid and solid fuels and the use of solar panels and radioactive power sources among many of the impressive innovations, allowing space agencies across the planet to undertake evermore ambitious missions that would once have never been thought possible.
Ten key missions that have advanced the field of space travel to a whole new level are:
Pioneer 10 and 11 (1972 – 2003)
1972 – 2003)
- The purpose of NASA’s Pioneer missions was to learn about the outer reaches of the Solar System.
- These two spacecraft were, at the time of their launch, the most scientifically advanced vehicles to venture into the Solar System.
- They contained a number of technical instruments that had never been used in space before, which included a charged particle instrument to measure the extent of the Sun’s influence as they travelled towards the edge of the Solar System, and an ultraviolet photometer to determine the composition of Jupiter’s atmosphere.
- While communication was lost in 2003 (Pioneer 10) and 1995 (Pioneer 11), the probes continue to make their way out of the Solar System, with each possessing an on board plaque detailing the origins of the spacecraft lest they are ever discovered by intelligent life-forms from another world.
- The Pioneer spacecraft were Earth’s first deep space probes, and held the record for being the furthest man made objects from Earth until they were overtaken by the Voyager probes in the 1990s.