Past Missions
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Apollo
President Kennedy's bold challenge set the nation on a journey unlike any before in human history--a journey to land on the moon.
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Apollo-Soyuz Test Project
The first international partnership in space wasn't the ISS or even the Shuttle-Mir missions; it was the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project.
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Ares I-X Flight Test
Ares I-X completes a successful flight test.
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Constellation
Ares rockets and the Orion crew vehicle.
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Deep Impact
Exploring Comet Tempel 1 to determine the origins of life in our Solar System.
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Explorer
America's first artificial satellite.
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Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST) →
FAST, the second mission in NASA's Small Explorer Satellite Program (SMEX), is a satellite designed to study Earth's aurora.
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Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) Mission →
FUSE looks at light in the far ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.
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Galileo →
Journey to Jupiter.
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Gemini
Bridge to the moon.
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Genesis Mission
The search for origins.
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Glory
The Glory mission failed to reach orbit after launch. Telemetry indicated the fairing did not separate as expected.
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Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) →
IMAGE is a mission to study the global response of the magnetosphere to the changes in solar wind.
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International Space Station
Read more about past missions to the International Space Station.
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Mars Global Surveyor →
After studying the Red Planet four times longer than originally planned, the Mars Global Surveyor orbiter succumbed to battery failure.
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Mars Pathfinder
Mars Pathfinder was the first mission to deliver a lander and a free-ranging robotic rover to the surface of Mars.
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Mercury
America's First Space Program.
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Phoenix Mars Lander
The search for possible conditions for life in the Martian arctic.
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Pioneer
A journey through our solar system and beyond.
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Pioneer Venus
The mission's objective was to investigate the Venus's solar wind, map the planet's surface and study the upper atmosphere.
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Polar Mission →
The Polar Mission was designed to obtain data from both high- and low-altitude perspectives of the polar region of geospace.
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QuikScat
The Quick Scatterometer, or QuikScat, replaces the NASA Scatterometer (NSCAT) instrument on Japan's Midori satellite.
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Shuttle-Mir
In the arena of space exploration, the U.S. and Russia share a history of competition and cooperation.
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Skylab
America's first space station and orbital science and engineering laboratory.
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Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) Mission →
SAMPEX studies the energy, composition and charge states of particles from supernova explosions in the distant reaches of the galaxy, from the heart of solar flares and from the depths of nearby interstellar space.
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Space Shuttle
Read more about past shuttle missions.
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Space Technology 5
The Space Technology 5 (ST5) Project built and tested micro-satellites to validate new technologies for future science missions.
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Stardust
Exploring Comet Tempel 1
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Topex Mission →
The Topex mission will collect information with which scientists can relate changes in ocean currents to atmospheric and climate patterns.
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Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) Mission →
TRACE enables solar physicists to study the connections between fine-scale magnetic fields and the associated plasma structures on the Sun.
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Viking
The Viking Mission to Mars: Determining whether life ever existed on Mars.
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UARS Mission →
The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), launched in 1991, orbited at an altitude of 375 miles.
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Ulysses Mission →
A mission to study the sun at all latitudes.