🚀 Space Mission Control
The missions that changed everything — told with real photographs and real numbers. From the rocket taller than a 30-storey building to the lander that touched the Moon's south pole first.
First humans on the Moon
On 20 July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed the Eagle on the Sea of Tranquility while Michael Collins orbited above. About 600 million people watched on TV — the largest audience in history at the time.
First landing near the Moon's south pole
On 23 August 2023, the Vikram lander touched down where no spacecraft had ever landed — near the lunar south pole. The little Pragyan rover rolled out and explored a region that may hold water ice for future Moon bases. India became the fourth country to soft-land on the Moon, and the first to do it there.
The most powerful rocket ever flown
Starship and its Super Heavy booster stand about 121 metres tall, powered by 33 Raptor engines — roughly twice the thrust of the Saturn V. It's designed to be fully reusable, and NASA has chosen a version of it to land Artemis astronauts on the Moon. SpaceX has even caught the returning booster with the launch tower's 'chopstick' arms.
The rocket that learned to land
Falcon 9's first stage flies to the edge of space, flips around, reignites its engines and lands upright — on land or on a drone ship at sea with names like 'Of Course I Still Love You'. Boosters have flown more than 20 missions each. Reusing rockets changed spaceflight forever.
A laboratory the size of a football field, in orbit
Built piece by piece over more than 40 launches by 15 countries, the ISS has hosted humans continuously since November 2000 — meaning for your entire life, there has always been someone living in space. It circles Earth every ~90 minutes at 28,000 km/h.
A golden eye looking back in time
JWST's 6.5-metre mirror — 18 gold-coated hexagons — unfolded in space like origami, 1.5 million km from Earth. Because light takes time to travel, Webb sees galaxies as they were over 13 billion years ago, close to the beginning of the universe.
A rover and the first helicopter on Mars
Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater — an ancient dried-up lake — using a rocket-powered 'sky crane'. It carried a stowaway: Ingenuity, a 1.8 kg helicopter that made the first powered flight on another world and went on to fly 72 times instead of the planned 5.
India reaches Mars on the first try
More than half of all Mars missions in history have failed. In September 2014, India's Mars Orbiter Mission slipped perfectly into Mars orbit — making India the first country ever to succeed on its very first attempt, on a famously small budget.
The farthest travellers in human history
Launched in 1977, the twin Voyagers toured Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, then just kept going. Voyager 1 is now in interstellar space, more than 24 billion km away, still whispering data home. Each carries a Golden Record with music and greetings from Earth — including a greeting in Hindi.
Humans return to the Moon
Artemis I flew an uncrewed Orion capsule around the Moon in 2022 on the giant SLS rocket. The plan: Artemis missions will land the first astronauts on the Moon since 1972 — this time near the south pole, aiming to build a long-term base. Maybe someone your age will be among the first Mars explorers.