10 Successful Space Missions and 10 That Failed Spectacularly

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon while Michael Collins remained in orbit. The mission succeeded against all odds, as the lunar module’s guidance computer had triggered alarms during the descent and fuel levels were so low that Armstrong had only about 25 seconds of hover time left when he finally landed.

Launched in 1977, the two Voyager probes were designed for a five-year mission to Jupiter and Saturn. Nearly 50 years later, they continue to transmit data. Voyager 1 is now more than 15 billion miles from Earth and has officially been in interstellar space since 2012.

Landing a car-sized rover on Mars using a flying crane system seemed crazy when NASA first proposed it. The “seven minutes of terror” during Curiosity’s landing in August 2012 saw engineers watch helplessly as the rover descended, knowing that any command sent from Earth would arrive too late to help. The rover landed perfectly in Gale Crater and immediately began conducting geological analyses.

The telescope has observed more than 50,000 celestial objects, helped calculate the rate at which the universe is expanding, captured the deepest images of space ever taken, and fundamentally changed astronomy. These Deep Field images, showing thousands of galaxies in what appeared to be an empty sky, are all thanks to Hubble.

When an oxygen tank exploded 320,000 km from Earth, the moon landing mission turned into a survival mission. NASA engineers and the crew cobbled together carbon dioxide scrubbers using duct tape, plastic bags, and spacesuit tubing. The defining moment of space exploration was not reaching a destination, but making it home.

Cassini orbited Saturn for 13 years, far exceeding its planned four-year mission. The probe discovered geysers on Enceladus, suggesting the presence of an underground ocean; found lakes of liquid methane on Titan; and transmitted more than 450,000 images. It will take decades to fully analyze the data it collected.

When SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy in February 2018, Elon Musk publicly stated that he would be happy if the rocket simply left the launch pad without exploding. Instead, the rocket performed flawlessly, two of the three boosters landed simultaneously at Cape Canaveral, and the payload headed for Martian orbit.

NASA landed Pathfinder on Mars in 1997 using airbags, a technique that seemed almost ridiculously simple compared to previous landing methods. The tiny Sojourner rover, about the size of a microwave oven, was designed to operate for seven days. It operated for 83 days, analyzing Martian rocks.

After a nine-year journey covering 3 billion miles, New Horizons flew past Pluto in July 2015, capturing the first close-up images of the dwarf planet. These images revealed a world that was much more geologically active and complex than anyone could have imagined, featuring plains of nitrogen ice, mountains of frozen water, and a vast heart-shaped region.

The assembly of the ISS required 42 flights and more than a decade of construction, beginning in 1998. The station has hosted more than 260 people from 20 countries, orbiting Earth more than 100,000 times. Scientists have conducted thousands of microgravity experiments, advancing research in various fields.

And now, here are ten instances where a space mission failed.

In September 1999, NASA’s Mars Climate Orbiter approached the Red Planet, ready to study the Martian climate and atmosphere. Unfortunately, engineers at Lockheed Martin used pound-force-seconds, while the NASA team used newton-seconds for the crucial thrust calculations. The orbiter entered too low, struck the Martian atmosphere at the wrong angle, and either burned up or bounced back into space.

The Soviets actually beat everyone to it by successfully landing on Mars in December 1971. Mars 3 landed, began transmitting, and then… nothing. After twenty seconds of garbled data, silence fell.

On January 28, 1986, seven astronauts were killed 73 seconds after launch when the Challenger disintegrated due to O-ring failures in freezing temperatures. Engineers at Morton Thiokol had warned against launching that morning, when temperatures were below zero. Management ignored their advice.

On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it re-entered the atmosphere, killing all seven crew members. A piece of foam insulation had broken off during launch 16 days earlier, striking Columbia’s left wing and damaging its heat-resistant tiles. Engineers had noticed the impact but had deemed it insignificant.

Russia’s most ambitious Mars mission in decades was launched in November 2011, bound for Phobos, one of Mars’ moons. The probe reached Earth’s orbit, but then its main engine failed to ignite. It continued to orbit the planet before finally crashing into the Pacific Ocean in January 2012.

Genesis spent more than two years collecting solar wind particles before returning to Earth in September 2004. The capsule entered Earth’s atmosphere over Utah, where helicopters were waiting to catch its parachute in mid-air. But the parachute never deployed.

Japan’s advanced X-ray telescope was launched in February 2016, the result of several years of international collaboration. Five weeks later, Hitomi’s thrusters fired based on erroneous data from its attitude control system, causing the satellite to spin out of control and break into pieces.

The European Space Agency’s Schiaparelli lander approached Mars in October 2016. During the descent, the navigation system malfunctioned, telling the computer that Schiaparelli was below ground level when it was actually still 3.7 km above the surface. The thrusters shut down, and the lander exploded upon impact.

Russia launched Luna 25 in August 2023, with the goal of landing near the Moon’s south pole. The spacecraft fired its engine for too long, entered an uncontrolled orbit, and crashed onto the Moon’s surface.

SpaceIL, a nonprofit organization, built Beresheet on a modest budget of about $100 million, hoping to make Israel the fourth country to land softly on the Moon. In April 2019, during the final descent, the main engine failed, causing Beresheet to crash.