The 15 Most Groundbreaking NASA Missions

When President John F. Kennedy gave his famous "We choose to go to the Moon" speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, the United States was already behind the Soviets in the space race (via Science Focus). In an effort to boost both public and congressional support for increasing NASA's budget, Kennedy delivered an address that declared that the United States would land on the moon before the end of the decade. 

The Apollo 11 mission was launched on July 16, 1969, carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin. Four days later on July 20, Aldrin and Armstrong touched down on the moon via the Lunar Module. Together, they spent 21 hours and 36 minutes on the surface of the Earth's moon (via NASA). 

The three crew members of Apollo 11 safely splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24. They were picked up by the recovery ship, the U.S.S. Hornet. 

Humankind had finally accomplished a feat that only imagination could have previously captured. Altogether, it is estimated that 650 million people worldwide watched this event live, setting a new record that would be unsurpassed until Prince Charles married Lady Diana in 1981 (via Reference).

The ability to capture images far beyond what Earthly telescopes can achieve was recognized in 1990. On April 24th of that year, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit via the space shuttle Discovery. Orbiting the Earth at more than 300 miles above its surface, the Hubble has been transmitting images back to Earth for over 30 years now (via HubbleSite). 

Hubble has been able to show the people of Earth both the beauty and vastness of the worlds that exist beyond what our naked eye sees. Hayden Planetarium director Neil deGrasse Tyson quipped, "No matter what Hubble reveals — planets, dense star fields, colorful interstellar nebulae, deadly black holes, graceful colliding galaxies, the large-scale structure of the Universe — each image establishes your own private vista on the cosmos," (via Rocket Stem).

Hubble is able to stay functional in part due to various servicing missions that keep the space telescope maintained and updated. The last servicing mission was carried out in 2009. 

The idea to maintain and constantly crew an orbiting space station was conceived early on in the NASA program. But it would take years of technological advances and international cooperation before this dream would become a reality. Under orders given by then-President Ronald Reagan, NASA began cooperating with the Japanese space program and the European Space Agency in 1984 (via ISS National Laboratory). By 1998, this collaboration would grow to include Russia's Roscosmos and the Canadian Space Agency (via National Geographic). 

Construction started in late 1998 and the International Space Station (ISS) was first occupied in 2000. It has been continuously occupied since, sometimes with as few as three crew members aboard. 

The ISS continues to grow, and improvements are almost always occurring. While crew members carry out a large portion of these duties, they are also tasked with experiments and lab studies. The results will help steer humankind in the direction of being able to live indefinitely off the surface of the Earth. Learning how to deal with near weightlessness, exposure to radiation, and other hazards of space travel are just part of what scientists need to overcome before this is possible. 

As of April 2021, 244 people from nine nations have been aboard the ISS (via Space). 

Not only did the Soviets launch the first successful satellite into orbit in 1957, but they also beat the United States in putting a human being into orbit. As noted by Space, on April 12, 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth for 108 minutes while onboard the Vostok 1. Per NASA, not wanting to fall too far behind the Soviets, NASA recruited U.S. Navy test pilot Alan Shephard to be the first NASA astronaut to be sent into orbit. He was sent into space aboard the Mercury capsule (dubbed Freedom 7) on May 5, 1961.

While traveling in a sub-orbital trajectory for less time than his Soviet cosmonaut counterpart, Shephard went down in history as the first American to do so. This buoyed the spirits of the American people, as they saw that the United States remained capable of competing with the Soviets in the space race.

Shephard became an important figure within NASA, eventually walking on the surface of the moon during the Apollo 14 mission in 1971 (via Biography). 

As noted above, the Soviet government's successful launch of the Sputnik space satellite on October 4th, 1957 sent the United States government into a panic. With the knowledge that the Soviets also shared the capacity for nuclear warfare, U.S. government officials foresaw a nightmare scenario in which their Cold War enemy would dominate the night sky, forcing the United States to be at their mercy.

Not wasting any time, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency commissioned the Jupiter rocket to carry its own satellite into orbit. On January 31, 1958, Explorer 1 was launched (via NASA). This satellite orbited the Earth more than 58,000 times before it crashed into the Earth's atmosphere on March 31, 1970.

With the success of Explorer 1, the space race stepped into high gear. The U.S. government immediately constructed additional Explorer satellites, attempting four subsequent launches throughout 1958. Of the five total Explorers launched, only three made it out of the Earth's atmosphere. 

As the costs associated with one-time use rockets took their toll on the federal government's budget, NASA scientists began to imagine a reusable vessel that could carry astronauts safely to and from space. According to Spaceline, designers presented their plans for the original space shuttle in late 1969, with NASA hopeful that a successful launch would be achieved no later than 1977. 

History tells us that NASA was a little off the mark in their prediction. The first successful shuttle launch occurred on April 12, 1981. On this date, astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen were launched into space aboard the space shuttle Columbia. This mission marked the first of many for this particular shuttle until disaster struck decades later. On February 1, 2003, the Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts aboard the spacecraft. 

Over the course of the so-called "Space Shuttle Era," NASA successfully launched five shuttles into space. Between the five shuttles, 135 shuttle missions were flown, carrying 833 different crew members. The shuttle program officially ended in 2011.

The Cassini-Huygens Project shows what can be accomplished when different space agencies pool their resources and knowledge to move humanity forward in the age of space exploration. With a mission to explore Saturn and its moons, this endeavor was a collaboration of the European Space Agency, NASA, and the Italian government's Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (via NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory). With a focus on the moon Titan, in particular, the Cassini-Huygens Project was developed to hopefully discover what chemical reactions are happening in this moon's atmosphere, as well as determine the source of the abundance of methane on Titan. 

This mission consisted of two separate spacecraft, the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. Cassini was constructed to continuously orbit Saturn, while the probe was to be launched from Cassini so that it could land on Titan.

Overall, this mission was structured so that the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe could conduct 27 separate scientific investigations. When the Huygens probe safely landed on the surface of Titan in 2005, scientists learned that the moon's surface had the consistency of wet sand and was comprised of tiny ice pebbles (via ESA Education). The probe also detected carbon dioxide on the ground, which wasn't found in Titan's atmosphere.

Cassini continued to orbit Saturn until September of 2017 when it ended its mission by plunging into Saturn's atmosphere and disintegrating. 

Launched in August 2003, the Spitzer Space Telescope has succeeded in being the first observatory to capture photos of planets that lie outside of our own solar system (via NASA). Known as extrasolar planets, images of these bodies were unable to be captured before this mission. Spitzer was able to discover the most remote planet from the Earth, orbiting a star nearly 13,000 light-years away. This telescope has also been able to capture a previously unknown ring of Saturn, a cluster of seven Earth-like planets rotating around a distant star, and has shown NASA the existence of the most remote galaxy in the universe, according to NASA (linked above). 

The images transmitted from Spitzer are breathtaking. Since 2003, scientists have been able to study detailed photos showing weather conditions on some extrasolar planets, as well as photographic proof of water vapor on others (see link above).

What was originally intended to be a two-and-a-half-year mission has far exceeded NASA's expectations. Still in orbit, the telescope continued to send photos of bodies outside our solar system until the funding for this project ended on January 30, 2020 (via Space).