10 AMAZING Space Missions That'll BLOW YOUR MIND!

- The human race's desire for discovery
has led us to some incredible places.
Most of them aren't on earth.
(beeping)
On September 5th, 1977, NASA's Voyager 1 space probe
was launched into space with the mission
to gather information about our solar system.
One of its biggest discoveries was volcanic activity
on one of Jupiter's moons.
It was only meant to last five years,
but, 40 years later and this Voyager is still boldly going
where no man has gone before.
Scientists turned off its cameras
back in 1980 to conserve energy
but turned them back on on February 14th, 1990,
to capture the only photo of our solar system
viewed from the outside.
Voyager was also equipped with a gold-plated record
to introduce humans to alien life forms.
It has music from Mozart and Chuck Berry,
a speech by US President Jimmy Carter,
brainwaves and even a baby crying.
In 2004, it left our solar system and officially entered
interstellar space in August of 2012.
It's still in contact with NASA today
and could last another 10 to 20 years
before it runs out of power.
And who knows what it's gonna find during that time.
Maybe it'll find bald aliens.
I know I'm not alone.
India's Mangaliyaan space probe was launched
on November 5th of 2013,
as part of the Mars Orbiter Mission, also known as MOM.
It was India's official entry
into interplanetary space exploration.
The probe went into orbit around Mars
on September 24th 2014,
and was the first space probe to reach Mars' orbit
from an Asian nation.
Not only that, it was the first country to do it
on it's first try.
MOM is studying Mars' surface and methane in the atmosphere.
Rather than trying to do everything,
the craft was designed to do important research
in a few key areas.
India's operation is the cheapest interplanetary
mission ever and only cost 74 million dollars.
Now that might seem like a lot to you
but it's nothing compared to NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter
which cost a staggering 671 million dollars.
India's prime minister Narendra Modi,
pointed out that it's even less than Hollywood spent
making the movie Gravity and they didn't even leave earth.
You hear that, Hollywood?
Take a page from India, they know what's up.
The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission
also known as TRMM was a joint mission
between NASA and JAXA,
the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency,
that was launched on November 27th 1997.
TRMM stopped collecting data on April 8th, 2015.
Which is pretty impressive since it was only designed
to last three years.
But going to space isn't all about finding aliens.
Taking a very distant look at our planet
can actually help us understand
just what is going on on earth.
And TRMM did just that.
Over it's 17 years in service,
it created a global data set
of tropical rainfall and lightning.
And set new measurement standards.
It was equipped with five instruments.
Three of which were sensors that measured rainfall.
This led to more advanced research
on the evolution and structure of cyclones,
lightning storms, and earth's climate.
All of which are used to forecast weather
and help us better prepare for droughts and floods.
Spam in a can was the nickname given to astronauts
who took part in NASA's Mercury program
which were the first manned US missions to go to space.
They got the nickname because the ships
were pretty much all automated and the astronauts
were more or less just along for the ride.
That is until astronaut Gordon Cooper
manned the program's final mission on the Mercury Atlas 9.
The ship was launched into orbit on May 15th, 1963.
And all was going fine until the 19th orbit
when the electrical system started to fail.
I would imagine you don't want anything failing,
especially electrical, when you're in space.
By the 21st orbit, all the automatic stabilization
and control systems had just stopped working
and the ship started to fill up with carbon dioxide.
In case you didn't know, that's not good for humans.
Cooper had to act quickly and manually calculate
his re-entry into earth.
Manually!
And all that he had was a wristwatch and the stars
to figure out his location.
But, Cooper was one heck of an astronaut
because not only did he survive,
but he also performed the most accurate landing
of the program.
Like it's name suggests,
the Viking mission set out to conquer
the great unknown of space.
Viking 1 was launched on August 20th, 1975.
And almost a year later on July 20th, 1976,
it officially became the first space craft
to successfully land on Mars,
with Viking 2 joining the party on September 3rd.
The Vikings orbited Mars, mapping 97% of the planet
and took over 50 thousand high resolution photos
of its landscape.
We've gotten used to seeing pictures of the red planet
from the Mars Rover.
But it was Viking 1 that transmitted the first ever photos
taken on the ground on Mars.
Between the two, they took over 45 hundred
close-up photos of the surface.
The probes were able to perform biological tests
of the martian soil for signs of life
and took the first ever measurements of Mars' atmosphere,
which are still being analyzed today.
The Viking missions were able to lay the groundwork
for NASA's journey to Mars program.
The SpaceShipOne launched on June 4th, 2004,
becoming the first private space craft
to ever leave earth's atmosphere
and reach the edges of space.
Space tourism has been in development for years
and SpaceShipOne was a major stepping stone
to making the ultimate getaway vacation a reality.
It was designed and built by the private company
Scaled Composites, which is owned by Burt Rutan,
an aerospace designer, and was largely financed
by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen.
It was also the first to have a non-government crew
and was piloted by civilian test pilot Mike Melvill
along with two other passengers.
And Melvill actually became the first
commercially licensed astronaut.
It flew 62.5 miles above earth's surface,
reaching sub-orbital space for about three minutes
before returning to earth.
SpaceShipOne was even reusable
and was able to fly two more flights
on September 29th, and October 4th.
As cool as this is, I still would never board
one of these things because I'm sure they've gotten
most of the technology down but all it takes
is one small error and you're just space junk.
On March 18th, 1965, Alexei Leonov
became the first man to walk in space
beating the US by three months.
Leonov was only attached to his ship, the Voskhod,
with a 16 foot cable, 1,553 miles above earth.
But after a couple of minutes,
Leonov's suit started to expand and got so big
that he couldn't fit back through the airlock.
Oh, nightmare realized!
He managed to deflate his suit enough
to get back inside with his commander
but when they prepared for re-entry,
the ship filled with dangerous levels of oxygen
and the controls stopped working.
Not exactly something you want to happen
when returning to earth.
When they tried to do it manually,
the landing capsule didn't separate properly
and they were sent spinning out of control
hurtling back to earth.
But, amazingly, they survived the landing,
but were way off course and spent two nights freezing
in the middle of the Siberian forest
trying not to get eaten by wolves.
But, miraculously, they survived and probably thankful
to have solid ground to walk on.
While many countries have been in competition
to conquer space,
the most complex and successful project
to ever be undertaken in space
is the International Space Station.
The ISS is a joint project between United States,
Russia, Europe, Japan, and Canada.
The first section of the station
was Russia's Zarya module that was launched in 1998.
Since then, it has been built in orbit piece by piece
over the last nearly 20 years.
It's almost as big as a football field
with two bathrooms and a gym.
Really, two bathrooms for an entire space station?
Somebody's gonna poop their pants.
The ISS can be seen from earth with the naked eye
and is in low orbit.
It has an altitude of about 248 miles
and takes 90 minutes to travel around earth
at 17,500 miles per hour.
It functions as a satellite, a technology lab,
and an astronomical environmental
and geological observatory.
It has been manned round the clock since 2000,
and in 2015, it was actually expanded
to prepare for commercial space travel,
which is expected to begin soon.
The space age officially began on October 4th, 1957,
when the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik 1,
the world's first artificial satellite
to go into earth's orbit.
It was basically, a big aluminum ball with long antennas
that weighted 184 pounds and was 22 inches in diameter
and traveled at 18 thousand miles per hour.
It was able to circle earth
in just over an hour and a half.
The Russian satellite was bigger and more advanced
than American technology which was still a few months
from being launched and led to panic
that the Soviets would start using the technology
for military purposes.
Not long after that, NASA was formed.
Sputnik lasted just over three months in orbit
but it paved the way for the modern world we know
where nearly all of our technology, cell phones,
Wi-Fi, and weather forecasts depend on satellites.
In Russian space, satellite transmit you.
During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union
weren't only on the brink of nuclear war,
they were also neck to neck in the space race.
On July 20th, 1969, that race was over
when America put the first man on the moon.
The moment American astronaut Neil Armstrong
first set foot on the moon was broadcast on TV
and was watched by an estimated 530 million people
around the world.
The moon landing was part of the Apollo program
which was set out by President John F. Kennedy,
who, in 1961, announced the goal of getting a man
on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
The program had a number of setbacks and tragedies,
including the deaths of three astronauts
when the cabin of Apollo 1 caught fire
during a test launch.
But six more moon landings followed Apollo 11
with the last in 1972.
The missions actually brought back lunar samples
and performed experiments on the soil,
solar winds, and magnetic fields.
That's it.
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10 AMAZING Space Missions That'll BLOW YOUR MIND!

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