From Apollo's darkest days to humanity's first transmission from Venus, we spent 2025 remembering the missions that made modern spaceflight possible. Here's what we covered - and why we're committed to keeping this series going.
Exactly 52 years ago today, the Soviet Union launched Soyuz 13 - a scientific mission that marked the first time American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts orbited Earth simultaneously. Armed with a revolutionary ultraviolet telescope, Pyotr Klimuk and Valentin Lebedev would discover elements never before seen in distant nebulae.
On December 15, 1970, a battered Soviet probe accomplished something no spacecraft had done before - it survived landing on another world and lived to tell about it.
Exactly 62 years ago, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ended the X-20 Dyna-Soar program, canceling one of the most ambitious spaceplane projects of the early Space Race - a vehicle that could have put aircraft in orbit decades before the Space Shuttle.
Sixty-eight years ago, America's first satellite exploded on the launchpad in front of the entire world. But from the ashes of Vanguard TV-3 came the determination that would eventually win the Space Race.
Sixty years ago, Frank Borman and James Lovell launched aboard Gemini 7 for a grueling 14-day mission that would prove humans could endure the journey to the moon and achieve the first true rendezvous in space
