On January 21, 1979, a rare phenomenon occurred in our solar system: Neptune, the 8th planet from the Sun, took over Pluto and became the outermost planet as Pluto moved closer due to their highly elliptical orbits. Pluto was still a planet back then (good old days!).
![Huygens spacecraft on Titan [artist concept]](https://cdn-0.ourplnt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Huygens-spacecraft-on-Titan-artist-concept.jpg)
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 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.
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.
On October 22, 1975, Soviet Union’s Venera 9 spacecraft landed on Venus and took the first photos from the surface of another planet.
‘Oumuamua, the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system was first detected on October 19, 2017, by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope.
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 asteroids, Gaspra and Ida, and discovered the first moon orbiting an asteroid (Dactyl orbiting Ida).