Curated category
Derelict landers (spacecraft)
- Viking programThe Viking program landed spacecraft on Mars in 1976, and for the next quarter-century it supplied nearly everything humanity knew about the red planet.
- Venera 9Venera 9 lifted off from Earth on the 8th of June, 1975. It carried a total mass of 4,936 kilograms and a mission unlike any before it.
- NEAR ShoemakerNEAR Shoemaker touched down on an asteroid on the 12th of February 2001, and nobody expected it to survive. The probe had been designed to orbit, not land.
- Venera 4Venera 4 arrived at Venus on the 18th of October 1967, carrying a question humanity had never been able to answer: what is it actually like inside the…
- Surveyor programIn 1960, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory began work on a new robotic program to prepare for human lunar landings. The agency selected Hughes Aircraft…
- Viking 1The Titan/Centaur rocket lifted off from Earth on the 20th of August 1975. This launch vehicle carried the Viking 1 spacecraft toward its distant target.
- Surveyor 1Surveyor 1 touched down on the Ocean of Storms on the 2nd of June 1966. This event marked the first successful soft landing by an American space probe on any…
- Philae (spacecraft)Philae touched down on a comet on the 12th of November 2014, then bounced twice before coming to rest on its side. This was the first attempt to land softly…
- Venera 13Venera 13 touched down on Venus on the 1st of March 1982, and then it did something no spacecraft had ever done before: it listened.
- Venera 7Venera 7 struck the surface of Venus on the 15th of December 1970, traveling at about 16.5 meters per second, and by all appearances it went silent on impact.