Voyager 1 performed the Jupiter flyby on March 5, 1979

On March 5, 1979, NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft performed a Jupiter flyby as it flew within 277,400 kilometers (172,368 miles) of the planet’s cloud tops or 348,890 km/216,790 miles from the center of mass.

Pioneer 10 was launched on March 2, 1972

On March 2, 1972, Pioneer 10, was launched by NASA on top of an Atlas-Centaur rocket (AC-27 / Atlas 3C no. 5007C / Centaur D-1A) to study Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, and its environment. The mission’s primary goal was to fly by Jupiter and study its atmosphere, magnetosphere, and radiation belts. …

Venera 13 became the first spacecraft to record sounds on another planet [Venus] on March 1, 1982

On March 1, 1982, the landing vehicle of the Soviet Union’s Venera 13 spacecraft landed on Venus and became the first spacecraft to record sounds on another planet.

The first soft landing on Titan was performed by the Huygens spacecraft on January 14, 2005

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.

The first soft landing on another planet (Venus) was performed by Venera 7 on December 15, 1970

On December 15, 1970, 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 …

Galileo spacecraft was launched on October 18, 1989

NASA’s Galileo spacecraft was launched on October 18, 1989, with the mission of studying Jupiter and its moons. It orbited Jupiter for almost eight years and made close passes by all its major moons. By doing so, it became the first spacecraft to orbit an outer planet in our solar system. Galileo also studied two …

The speed of New Horizons spacecraft: how fast is it?

Google product developer Clay Bavor created a gif putting the Boeing 747 and SR-71 aircraft speeds into perspective compared to NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft. So you can have an idea of the speed of the New Horizons spacecraft, which performed a flyby study of the Pluto system in 2015. Spoiler: it’s fast!