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On January 14, 2005, the Huygens spacecraft, the atmospheric entry robotic probe part of the Casini-Huygens mission performed the first soft landing on Titan. As of 2023, it is the only one accomplished in the outer Solar System and was also the first on a moon other than Earth’s, and the most distant landing ever.
On January 4, 2004, NASA’s Spirit Rover landed on Mars. It was a robotic Mars exploration vehicle, and with its twin Opportunity, studied the history of climate and water at sites on Mars where conditions may once have been favorable to life. Operational from January 4, 2004, to March 22, 2010, Spirit far outlasted her planned 90-day mission.
On January 3, 2019, China’s lunar lander and rover Chang’e 4 achieved the first soft landing on the far side of the Moon in the history of humanity’s space exploration. It’s a space exploration success no nation or space agency (including NASA) has accomplished even as of January 2023.
On December 15, 1970, the Soviet Union’s Venera 7 spacecraft landed on Venus’ surface and became the first spacecraft to perform a soft landing on another planet. It also transmitted information to Earth for 53 minutes, 23 minutes of them from the Venusian surface, another first in the history of space exploration (the first data transmission from another planet).
On December 4, 1996, Mars Pathfinder, a robotic spacecraft that was designed primarily to demonstrate a low-cost way of delivering a set of science instruments and a free-ranging rover (Sojourner) to the Martian Surface was launched from Cape Canaveral on top of a Delta II rocket.
On December 2, 1971, Soviet Union’s Mars 3 robotic space probe performed the first soft Mars landing. But, just 110 seconds after the landing, and 20 seconds after the transmissions has begun, it failed and transmitted just a gray image with no details. Although having no scientific value, this was the first transmission ever from the surface of Mars.
On November 20, 1998, the first element of the International Space Station, the Russian module Zarya (which means “Sunrise” in Russian) was launched into space on top of a Proton rocket. It was the first step towards more than two decades of international cooperation, scientific research, and discovery.
On November 16, 2022, Wednesday, NASA finally launched its next moon rocket: Artemis I, NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, carrying the uncrewed Orion spacecraft lifted off from Launch Complex 39B in Florida at 1:47 a.m. EST.
On November 9, 1971, NASA’s Mariner 9 spacecraft entered Mars orbit and became the first spacecraft to maintain an orbit around another planet than Earth. Mariner 9 beat Soviet Union’s Mars 2 by 13 days despite being launched 11 days later than its Soviet counterpart.
In about 11 months, the orbiter mapped 85% of the Martian surface and sent back more than 7,000 pictures, including images of Olympus Mons (the highest mountain in the Solar System), Valles Marineris, and two natural satellites of Mars, Phobos, and Deimos.
A captured German V-2 rocket (V2 #13) took the first photo of Earth from space on October 24, 1946. The rocket was launched from the White Sands Missile Range carrying a 35mm motion picture camera onboard. The camera also recorded the first footage of Earth from space, snapping an image every second and a half.