Timeline of Solar System exploration

This article is about listing events in a comprehensive list. For a timeline of first-ever achievements, see Timeline of space exploration.
Charted timeline of Solar System exploration through December 2014

This is a timeline of Solar System exploration ordering events in the exploration of the Solar System by date of spacecraft launch. It includes:

  • All spacecraft that have left Earth orbit for the purposes of Solar System exploration (or were launched with that intention but failed), including lunar probes.
  • A small number of pioneering or notable Earth-orbiting craft.[vague]

It does not include:

  • Centuries of terrestrial telescopic observation.
  • The great majority of Earth-orbiting satellites.
  • Space probes leaving Earth orbit that are not concerned with Solar System exploration (such as space telescopes targeted at distant galaxies, cosmic background radiation observatories, and so on).
  • Probes that failed at launch.

The dates listed are launch dates, but the achievements noted may have occurred some time later—in some cases, a considerable time later (for example, Voyager 2, launched 20 August 1977, did not reach Neptune until 1989).

1950s

Sputnik 1 – First Earth orbiter

1960s

Vostok 1 – First crewed Earth orbiter
Mariner 2 – First successful Venus flyby
Mariner 4 – First successful Mars flyby
Luna 9 – First successful lunar lander
Zond 5 – First lunar flyby and return to Earth, first terrestrials to circle the Moon
Apollo 8 – First crewed lunar orbiter
Apollo 11 – First crewed lunar landing

1970s

Mars 3 – First Mars lander
Pioneer 10 – First Jupiter flyby
Mariner 10 – First Mercury flyby
Voyager 2 – First Uranus/first Neptune flyby

1980s

Galileo – Mission to Jupiter

1990s

Mars Pathfinder – Mars lander and the first successful Mars rover, Sojourner
Cassini–Huygens – First Saturn orbiter and first Titan lander

2000s

Mars Express/Beagle 2 – First planetary mission by the ESA
MESSENGER – First Mercury orbiter
Chandrayaan-1 – Water Around Fresh Moon Crater

2010s

Mars Science Laboratory – Mars lander and large rover
Mangalyaan – First Indian Mars orbiter
Trace Gas Orbiter – ESA/Roscosmos Mars orbiter

2020s

NASA's Perseverance rover

Planned or scheduled

Main article: List of proposed Solar System spacecraft

See also

References

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Uses material from the Wikipedia article Timeline of Solar System exploration, released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license.