Curated playlist
NASA space probes
- Dawn (spacecraft)NASA cancelled the Dawn spacecraft twice before it ever launched. It later orbited two worlds, Vesta and Ceres.
- Voyager 2Voyager 2 launched in 1977 to visit four giant planets in one trip. A rare planet alignment made that tour possible.
- Cassini–HuygensCassini-Huygens dove into Saturn's atmosphere on purpose in 2017. It kept Earth microbes off possibly living moons.
- Voyager 1Voyager 1's rocket shut down early, leaving its upper stage only 3.4 seconds from running dry.
- Galileo (spacecraft)NASA deliberately crashed the Galileo spacecraft into Jupiter in 2003. The goal was to protect the moon Europa.
- New HorizonsTen days before its Pluto flyby, the New Horizons probe went into safe mode. Two tasks overloaded its main computer.
- 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.
- Parker Solar ProbeParker Solar Probe flew closer to the Sun than any human-made object ever had.
- MESSENGERMESSENGER found evidence of water ice in permanently shadowed craters near Mercury's north pole.
- 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.