Machines have been going into space since February 24, 1949, when the United States launched the Bumper-WAC at White Sands Proving Ground in New Mexico. It was a two-stage rocket consisting of a WAC Corporal sounding rocket atop a German-made V2. As it reached an altitude of 244 miles (393 km), it became the first object made by humans to enter outer space. As significant as this was, the Bumper-WAC didn't cause nearly the commotion our next machine did.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
When this beach-ball sized metal object went into orbit, the planet it circled changed forever. Sputnik 1 was the world's first artificial satellite, as well as the first shot in the space race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Americans scrambled to keep up — and had some misfires — but eventually placed Explorer 1 in Earth orbit in early 1958. A little more than a decade later, the U.S. put men on the moon. Yet unmanned exploration of our solar system continued — and our next craft has gone far beyond the call of duty.
Image Credit: NASA
Voyager 2 is part of a pair of spacecraft launched in summer 1977 to explore our solar system's outer planets. Two years later it flew by Saturn, and two years after that, it reached Jupiter. NASA extended the mission to Uranus, where it captured more than 8,000 images of the planet and its moons. Though it was collecting valuable information, it also had a story to tell, as you'll see next.
Image Credit: NASA
This is a human calling card to the universe. Copies of this gold-plated copper record were placed on each of the Voyager spacecraft. The record contains spoken greetings in 55 different languages, scientific drawings and photos of everything from rush hour traffic in India to Olympic sprinters to a woman in a supermarket eating grapes she apparently hasn't paid for yet. The musical selections include Balinese gamelan, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and "Johnny B. Goode." How far has the record gone? You'll see in the next picture.
Image Credit: NASA
In 1989, Voyager 2 reached Neptune. It sailed above the planet's north pole at an altitude of approximately 3,000 miles (4,950 km), the closest it came to any planet in the first 12 years of its journey. It took 10,000 pictures of Neptune and its satellites, then continued on its way to the outer reaches of the solar system. It hasn't lost touch with Earth, and as NASA tracks its progress, fans can even follow it on a Twitter feed. Next: fixing the Hubble's troubles.
Image Credit: NASA
The Hubble Space Telescope had a tough childhood. Originally scheduled to launch in fall 1986, it was delayed by the temporary stoppage of the space program after the Challenger disaster. After Hubble ascended in 1990 on Space Shuttle Discovery, scientists quickly realized something wasn't right. Images weren't as sharp as they expected. The outer edge of Hubble's main mirror was ground too deeply — just one-50th the thickness of a human hair, but enough to require repair. Subsequent shuttle missions, like this one by Space Shuttle Atlantis in May 2009, have fixed the telescope and enabled scientists to see wonders of the universe. To see for yourself, check out the next picture.
Image Credit: NASA
This is an interstellar maternity ward. NASA released this 2010 photo of the Carina Nebula — an area where stars are born — to celebrate Hubble Space Telescope's 20th anniversary in space. Infant stars within the tall pillar of cool hydrogen and dust are spewing jets of gas. Hubble is showing us the farthest known galaxies in the universe, but we're still sending unmanned spacecraft on missions in our own neighborhood, as you'll see in the next picture.
Image Credit: NASA/ESA/M. Livio/Hubble 20th Anniversary Team
Twin Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity launched in summer 2003 and landed on Mars in 2004. This 2005 photo shows Opportunity's arm and a circular mark it made with its rock scraping tool. The rock is named Gagarin and the target Yuri, for Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who became the first human to enter space in 1961. Though the rovers were built for three-month missions on the red planet, they just kept rolling along — as you'll see next.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity were designed to last only 90 days on the Martian surface. But the twins refused to quit, and have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the planet. Spirit made its last contact with Earth in March 2010, and NASA decided to stop trying to reach it the following year. Yet Opportunity didn't give up, and April 1, 2011 it captured this image of its tracks after rolling backward on autopilot along the Martian surface. The shell-shaped interruptions in the tracks were caused by the craft stopping every 4 feet (1.2 meters) to rotate slightly, so its camera could see where it was going. Next up, see another set of twins headed for the moon.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Blue Angels aren't the only precision fliers. The Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft will fly in formation above the moon and examine its gravity field. NASA scientists also hope to determine the size of the moon's core and get additional insight into the formation of the Earth and other rocky planets. In the next photo, see another craft looking for things we can't see.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
You may not be able to see black holes and the locations of collapsed stars, but NuSTAR will. Launching in 2012 from an island in the Pacific Ocean, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array can increase scientists' ability to explore X-ray emissions anywhere from 10 to 100 times over. Researchers hope to look both deep within and outside the Milky Way to gain information about the life cycles of stars and the creation of elements. NuStar can also map electromagnetic activity on the Sun. Do you know the name of the spacecraft scheduled to launch in 2013?
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This is an artist's conception of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), which is scheduled to begin its journey to the red planet in 2013. It will help researchers try to figure out what happened to the Martian atmosphere. Where did it go? Where's the water that was once there?
Image Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Outposts such as the International Space Station (ISS) have put unmanned spacecraft to good use over the years. Particularly those hauling cargo up to the waiting ISS teams. This unmanned cargo spacecraft, the European Space Agency's "Edoardo Amaldi," brought to the ISS a shipment of oxygen, water, propellant and a lot of dry cargo that included items such as hardware, extra parts, food and clothes. It's seen here as it gets ready to dock with the ISS.
Image Credit: NASA
Here's another cargo craft, this one rolling out to the launch pad for a trip to the International Space Station (ISS). The ISS Progress 45 craft was getting ready for its trip in this shot from fall of 2011. We can see a Soyuz booster rocket that will power the Russian resupply vehicle into space. The Progress 45 carried tons of food, fuel and supplies up to the ISS.
Image Credit: NASA
Here's a depiction of the solar-powered Juno spacecraft orbiting Jupiter. The craft was launched in August of 2011, and it's in the midst of a five-year journey out -- way out! -- to study Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system. In our next picture, we'll see the Juno craft with its solar array deployed.
Image Credit: NASA
This still image from a Juno mission animation displays what the spinning spacecraft looks like during deployment of its enormous solar arrays. It only took a few minutes for the array to be deployed, just after Juno separated from its launch vehicle's upper stage booster.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Here's an artist's concept of the ARTEMIS spacecraft in orbit around the Moon. ARTEMIS stands for "Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon’s Interaction with the Sun," and it was inserted into orbit around the moon in late June of 2011. It's actually one of two ARTEMIS probes in orbit around our waxing and waning friend in the night sky. NASA expects the ARTEMII to provide them with data about the internal structure of the moon for another seven to 10 years.
Image Credit: NASA
Here's another great workhorse of the heavens, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, pictured in an artist's illustration. The Chandra was launched into high-Earth orbit by the space shuttle Columbia in 1999. Its job, to this day, is to take high-resolution, long-exposure images of celestial objects, taking advantage of its ability to shoot in the X-ray spectrum.
Image Credit: NASA/CXC/D. Berry
This artist concept shows us the Atlas V541 launch vehicle that carried NASA's Curiosity rover on its way to Mars. The car-sized rover, in a payload atop this launch vehicle, was launched in November of 2011. NASA expects Curiosity to land on Mars in August 2012. After landing, the rover will spend two years looking for signs that Mars has ever had the kind of conditions that would encourage microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Here we see a rendition of NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray space telescope. As of spring 2012, it's spent a bit more than three years in space scanning the heavens and fashioning a portrait of space as seen in gamma rays, the form of light with the most energy.
Image Credit: NASA
NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer spacecraft, or WISE, is situated on a work stand in this picture. At left, we can see its fixed-panel solar array, the better to power through the skies. WISE's job is to scan the sky in infrared light in order to reveal objects never seen before -- including stars, galaxies and near-Earth asteroids and comets.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Here's an artist's concept of the Cassini spacecraft, which in 2004 reached its target planet of Saturn. Its job was to orbit the planet for study and even release a probe that would enter the atmosphere of one of Saturn's many moons, Titan. Initially targeted for a four-year mission, Cassini is still in good operational health as of spring 2012. Next, we'll look at a spacecraft with an unusual job: take measurements of Earth's oceans from space.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft is the result of a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency (with participation from Brazil, Canada, France and Italy). The craft's key instrument, Aquarius, was built by NASA and in the fall of 2011 was able to provide the first global map of ocean salinity. The variable is important because it has been missing from satellite observations of Earth and links ocean circulation, the global balance of freshwater and climate.
Image Credit: NASA
Here's an unmanned spacecraft that was launched way back in 1997, the ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer), its solar array fully spread. The craft had high-resolution sensors and monitoring instruments, and its primary task was to sample low-energy particles of solar origin and high-energy galactic particles that arrive on Earth from the sun and from other interstellar and galactic sources. Believe it or not, some 15 years later ACE is still out there making a living. Scientists even devised a new fuel-use strategy for the craft that they expect will keep it on the job through 2024.
Image Credit: Caltech
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has as its mission to uncover and display the conditions of the early universe. It does that by measuring the properties of the cosmic microwave background radiation across the entire sky. (The background radiation comes from the Big Bang itself.) Here we see an illustration of the WMAP spacecraft borrowing some of the moon's gravity to gain velocity and slingshot itself to a point 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth.
Image Credit: NASA / WMAP Science Team
This spacecraft is an artist's rendering of the Swift observatory. Its mission is to find gamma-ray bursts and observe them in multiple wavelengths: gamma-ray, X-ray, ultraviolet, and optical. It's trying to determine the origin of gamma-ray bursts, classify them and find new types, find out how the bursts evolve and interact with their surroundings, use the bursts to study the early universe and perform what NASA terms the first sensitive hard X-ray survey of the sky. Swift finds about 100 bursts per year, according to NASA. It was launched in 2004.
Image Credit: Spectrum Astro
Here's an illustration of the Dawn spacecraft, launched by NASA to study the asteroid Vesta as well as the dwarf planet Ceres. Because those celestial bodies formed early in the history of our solar system, the Dawn mission hopes to paint a clear picture of its early days and help scientists understand more about its formation. It launched in 2007, reached Vesta in 2011 and is expected to complete its primary mission in July of 2015.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The Galaxy Evolution Explorer, or just Galaxy, was launched in 2003, its mission to study the shape, brightness, size and distance of galaxies across 10 billion years of the cosmos, peering far back through time. Its 19.7-inch (50-centimeter) in diameter telescope patrolled the heavens in search of ultraviolet-light sources. Ultraviolet is the light that lives at the higher end of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its frequency is just above visible light but below X-rays and gamma rays. A small amount of ultraviolet penetrates Earth's atmosphere, giving us our sunburns when we forget to apply sunscreen. The Galaxy, though, was out to observe the ultraviolet frequencies that could only be detected from space. Early in 2012, the venerable Galaxy craft was set to be decommissioned. It finished its primary work in 2007, but kept on ticking anyway, carrying on its study of stars and galaxies. Next, we'll check out an unmanned spacecraft that verified some of the theories of one of the greatest minds in human history.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
This image is of the Gravity Probe B (GP-B), undergoing testing. Its mission was through experimentation to investigate Albert Einstein's 1916 general theory of relativity -- his overarching theory of gravity. Its goal was to test Einstein's predictions about the warping of space-time by large bodies and also to test how far those large bodies "dragged" space-time around with them as they spun in space. Launched in 2004, the plucky probe indeed confirmed these aspects of Einstein's work.
Image Credit: Stanford University
We'll end this gallery with not quite the holy grail, but a grail nonetheless: The Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory kind of GRAIL. The GRAIL mission's objective, using two spacecraft in the same orbit, was essentially to measure gravity on the moon, helping scientists create a high-resolution map of the lunar gravitational field. Here we see an artist's rendering of the two spacecraft (dubbed Ebb and Flow by NASA) flying together in a synchronized fashion -- an amazing aeronautic and technical feat, considering it's being conducted over the moon. The GRAIL launched on September 10, 2011. As of spring 2012, the two craft were still engaged in their lunar dance.
Now that you've seen our Unmanned Spacecrafts Pictures, check out our Kepler Telescope Pictures!
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MIT
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