Human exploration

A human exploration mission is a crewed flight, or work by a crew, that pushes into new ground or shows what a vehicle can do. This list covers lunar flights from Apollo 11, the first landing, in July 1969, to Apollo 13, which returned safely after an in-flight failure, and Artemis II, the 2026 crewed flight around the Moon. It also covers early stations, Salyut 1 and Mir Space Station, shuttle work such as Hubble Servicing Mission 1, and the two shuttle losses, Challenger STS-51-L and Columbia STS-107, in which seven crew members died on each. Apart from Apollo and Artemis II, no human spaceflight has gone beyond low Earth orbit.

Events

16 January 2003

Columbia STS-107
- Space Shuttle
- Rick Husband, William C. McCool, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon
The crew of STS-107 spent their time in orbit on a research flight, with experiments in the life, physical and Earth sciences.
9 videos
- AP Archive
- Weird History
- ABC News
2 December 1993

Hubble Servicing Mission 1
- Space Shuttle
- Richard O. Covey, Ken Bowersox, Story Musgrave, Jeffrey A. Hoffman, Kathryn C. Thornton, Claude Nicollier, Thomas Akers
Hubble was built to be serviced by astronauts, with handrails and instruments designed to be removed and replaced.
2 videos
- NASA Goddard
- Aviation & Space
28 January 1986

Challenger STS-51-L
- Space Shuttle
- Dick Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Ronald McNair, Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe
Christa McAuliffe was to be the first teacher in space, and the flight drew an audience in classrooms across the United States.
21 videos
- The New York Times
- Mr. Beat
- M M
19 April 1971

Salyut 1
- Proton, Soyuz
1 video
- Scott Manley
11 April 1970

Apollo 13
- Apollo spacecraft, Saturn V
- Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert, Fred Haise
Apollo 13 was meant to be the third landing on the Moon, in the Fra Mauro highlands. After the rupture it became a rescue, worked out in real time by the crew and the flight controllers in Houston. The crew never landed, and every one of them came home.
18 videos
- Roberto Mastri
- Rearview Mirror Media
- Homemade Documentaries
16 July 1969

Apollo 11
- Apollo spacecraft, Saturn V
- Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins
Apollo 11 was NASA's first attempt to land people on the Moon, and it worked. The Saturn V that launched it, the lunar module that landed and the command module that came home were the full stack of the Apollo programme, flown by a crew of three.
4 videos
- Vox
- Primal Space
- Progress – Science Documentaries
Apollo 16
- Apollo spacecraft, Saturn V
- John Young, Ken Mattingly, Charles Duke
1 video
- Everyday Astronaut
Skylab
- Apollo spacecraft, Saturn V
Skylab was a Saturn V third stage turned into a house. Sixty-three seconds after liftoff the thin shield that was meant to protect it from meteoroids and sunlight tore away, taking one of its two solar arrays with it.
8 videos
- The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
- Retro Space HD
- Hubbell Power Systems
Mir Space Station
- Soyuz, Space Shuttle
- Vasily Tsibliyev, Alexander Lazutkin, Michael Foale
1 video
- Calamine Waffles
US Spacewalk 100
- Cargo Dragon
- Anil Menon, Joshua Kutryk
1 video
- NASA
Artemis II
- Orion, SLS
- Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen
Artemis II was the first crewed flight of the Artemis programme and the first time people had flown to the Moon since Apollo 17. Orion Integrity was the first crewed spacecraft to fly on the Space Launch System.
5 videos
- Everyday Astronaut
- NASA