Curated playlist
Derelict space probes
- Phobos programA single wrong character in an upload command doomed the Soviet probe Phobos 1.
- Venera 1On the 19th of May 1961, the Soviet probe Venera 1 swept past Venus, and nothing it carried was able to tell Earth. No spacecraft had ever traveled so far. Venera 1 was the first to complete an interplanetary flight and the first to fly…
- Mariner 4Mariner 4 sent back the first close photographs of Mars in 1965. They showed a cratered, Moon-like surface.
- Pioneer 11Up close, Pioneer 11 showed Saturn's rings as dark and the gaps as bright. From Earth, they look the opposite.
- Dawn (spacecraft)NASA cancelled the Dawn spacecraft twice before it ever launched. It later orbited two worlds, Vesta and Ceres.
- Pioneer 10Pioneer 10 was guaranteed for two years but kept transmitting for more than thirty.
- NEAR ShoemakerNEAR Shoemaker was meant to crash into an asteroid, but it landed in one piece. It kept transmitting on Eros.
- Stardust (spacecraft)Dust from Comet Wild 2 held minerals that form only near the Sun. Stardust brought the grains back to Earth.
- Mariner 10Mariner 10 was the first probe to use one planet's gravity to slingshot toward another.
- Mariner 2Mariner 2 was built in an 11-month rush after its rocket was not ready.
- Deep Impact (spacecraft)Deep Impact fired a copper-tipped probe into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005.
- International Cometary ExplorerA spacecraft built to study Earth's magnetic bubble became the first to pass through a comet's tail.
- Pioneer 6, 7, 8, and 9Four small Pioneer probes formed the first early-warning network for solar storms.