# Timeline of Space Exploration | Part 1: The Moon

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** UsefulCharts
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSXNa6bYqaw
- **Дата:** 03.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 20:29
- **Просмотры:** 118,836
- **Источник:** https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/51939

## Описание

Buy the poster:
https://usefulcharts.com/products/timeline-of-space-exploration

CREDITS:
Chart & Narration by Matt Baker
Animation by Syawish Rehman
Visual editing by Ramiro Sottosanto 
Audio editing by Ali Shahwaiz
Theme music: "Lord of the Land" by Kevin MacLeod and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0. Available from http://incompetech.com

## Транскрипт

### Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) []

Hi, this is Matt Baker. For the first time in over 50 years, humans are going to the moon. The mission is called Artemis 2 and it's a really big deal because although sending humans into space has become somewhat of a routine thing, sending them beyond Earth orbit has not. Let me explain. This is Earth and this is what's called lower Earth orbit. It's basically everything from about 160 km above the Earth's surface to 2,000 surface. To date, of the 384 human space flights that have been launched into space, only nine, that's right, nine have gone beyond lower Earth orbit. These unique space flights traveled all the way to the moon, which as you can see makes for a much farther trip. The last time anyone traveled this far was way back in 1972. That is until the current Artemis mission, which is on its way right now. It includes the first-ever woman to make the trip, the first-ever person of color, and the first non-American. So, in order to mark this special occasion, I decided to launch something of my own, this brand-new timeline of space exploration chart, which not only covers the history of human space flight, but also the many space probes that have been sent out to explore the solar system. If you want to get a copy of this brand-new chart, just head over to usefulcharts. com right now or simply click the link in the description or pinned comment. In today's video, I'll be concentrating mostly on the section showing missions to the moon, but in future videos, I'll be covering the other parts as well. So, keep an eye out for those. — The date October the 4th, 1957 is generally seen as being the start of the space age. That's because that's the day that the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, which became the first-ever human-made object to orbit the Earth. Up to that point, there had been rockets that had reached space, the definition being 100 km above the Earth, but their payloads had all fallen back down after just a few minutes, something that's called a suborbital space flight. Sputnik 1 was different because it reached the speed necessary to stay in space. In other words, to go round and round the Earth without falling, something called orbital space flight. But then, just 1 year later, the Soviet Union did something even more remarkable. They launched Luna 1, which was the first probe to escape Earth's gravity altogether and to travel all the way to the moon. It was actually supposed to hit the moon, meaning crash into it, but it missed and therefore ended up being a flyby mission. Luna 2, launched in October 1958, was the first probe to actually hit the moon and thus is the oldest human-made object on the surface. Now, neither Luna 1 nor Luna 2 had a camera on board, but Luna 3 did, which allowed humanity to see something it had never seen before. You see, one of the interesting things about the moon is that it is tidally locked to the Earth, which means that when we look up at it, we always see the same side. But when Luna 3 flew by the moon, it took photos and therefore we got our first-ever look at the far side of the moon. So, as you can see, it was the Soviets who were clearly in the lead at the beginning of the space race. The US didn't have its first fully successful mission to the moon until Ranger 7 in 1964. It purposefully crash-landed on the moon and sent back the first-ever high-resolution photos of the surface before it did so. Now, one thing you need to know about this chart is that it doesn't show every single successful mission. So, for example, after Ranger 7 came Ranger 8 and 9, which also impacted the moon. Okay, so the next step was to land on the moon, not by crashing, but by making what's called a soft landing. Yet again, it was the Soviets who were the first to do this with Luna 9 in February of 1966. But this time, the US was close behind, soft-landing Surveyor 1 just a few months later. Likewise, the Soviets were also first to get one of their probes to orbit the moon, Luna 10 in March of '66. But the US was once again close behind, achieving the same thing with Lunar Orbiter 1 in August. Now, of course, the real goal was not to just keep sending robotic spacecrafts to the moon, but to eventually send one with humans. But in

### Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) [5:00]

order to achieve this, humans first had to conquer lower Earth orbit. So, let's back up a bit and quickly take a look at that. When it comes to human space flight, the Soviets had a program called Vostok and the US had one called Project Mercury. Both countries used animals for test flights, but take note that whereas the Soviets did test flights with dogs, the US used monkeys and apes. Again, the Soviets were initially ahead. So, the first higher organisms to survive orbital space flight ended up being two dogs named Belka and Strelka in 1960 aboard Korabl-Sputnik 2, a prototype for Vostok. Laika had been sent into orbit earlier on Sputnik 2, but sadly did not survive. And even earlier, way back in 1951, Dezik and Tsigan had been sent into space and had survived, but their flight had been suborbital, not orbital. However, with Belka and Strelka's successful orbital flight, the path was made clear for a human to fly aboard Vostok. As you probably know, the first human to fly to space was a Soviet man named Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 in 1961. There were six Vostok flights altogether and the last one, Vostok 6 in 1963, carried the first woman to fly to space, Valentina Tereshkova. Meanwhile, the US was busy with Project Mercury. It sent Ham the chimpanzee into space just a few months before Yuri Gagarin and then the first American, Alan Shepard, about 1 month after Gagarin. But take note that these two flights were both suborbital. The first American to make an orbital space flight was John Glenn in 1962. Next came the Voskhod program in the Soviet Union and Project Gemini in the US, both of which featured two-person spacecrafts. Both programs involved the first-ever spacewalks by each country and in addition to this, Gemini in particular focused on astronauts learning to do certain maneuvers in space, such as changing orbit and docking, things that would be important for future lunar missions. Okay, so up to this point, the Soviets had been the clear front-runners in the space race. However, starting in the year 1966, things started to turn in favor of the US after the Soviets suffered several major tragedies in a row. The first was the unexpected death of Sergei Korolev. You are probably familiar with the name Wernher von Braun, the former Nazi who was then recruited by the US, becoming their chief rocket engineer. Well, Korolev was basically the Soviets' Wernher von Braun. So, losing him right in the middle of the space race was a major blow. Then in 1967, the next Soviet spacecraft, the Soyuz, which could hold up to three crew members, crash-landed during its very first mission, killing the pilot. This was followed by Yuri Gagarin's death in 1968 in a plane crash. And then the failure of their moon rocket, the N1, in 1969. The US also suffered a major tragedy in 1966 when astronauts died in a cockpit fire while testing the new Apollo spacecraft. But then, things got better and better. Take note that the Apollo program box has three columns. This first one represents flights that stayed within lower Earth orbit, whereas the second represents flights to the moon that did not land, and the third land. Now, although everyone tends to focus on Apollo 11 as it was the mission that landed humans on the moon for the very first time, Apollo 8 was in many ways even more important. Similar in scope to the Artemis 2 mission occurring right now, Apollo 8 saw the first humans to be launched aboard a Saturn 5 rocket, which was the US's equivalent of the Soviet N1. But whereas the N1 failed, the Saturn 5 succeeded and sent humans past lower Earth orbit very first time and onwards towards the vicinity of the moon. It is estimated that a quarter of the world's population was watching when Apollo 8 arrived at the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at which time the astronauts read some verses from Genesis chapter 1, ending with "We close with good night. Good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth. " They also took this famous photo called Earthrise, which was the first-ever color picture of the Earth taken from the moon and which has been credited with launching the modern environmentalist movement. After Apollo 8, there were two more test flights and then six actual moon and ending with Apollo 17 in 1972. Each

### Segment 3 (10:00 - 15:00) [10:00]

time, two astronauts landed on the moon, while a third astronaut stayed aboard the main spacecraft and orbited the moon. That means to date, only 12 people have had the privilege of actually walking on the moon. The final three missions are notable in that they were longer, spending about 3 days on the surface each time. They also made use of the lunar roving vehicle. Now, if you look closely, you'll notice that Apollo 13 is missing from the list of landing missions. That's because it was supposed to land on the moon, but didn't due to an exploded oxygen tank. The story of that mission and how the astronauts managed to make it home safely is told in the Tom Hanks movie Apollo 13. Now, while the Soviets did not ever send any humans to the moon, they did actually complete several more important lunar missions. For example, a few months before Apollo 8, they succeeded in sending the first-ever life forms to the moon aboard Zond 5, which included two tortoises who arrived back to Earth home safely. During the '70s, the Soviets also completed several sample return missions, as well as two missions involving robotic rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2. But then, following Luna 24 in 1976, exploration of the moon abruptly stopped. And for the next 14 years, there was not a single lunar mission launched by any country. So, no missions to the moon during the 1980s. There were two main reasons for this. First, with the completion of the Apollo moon landings, the US had basically won the space race hands down. So, there was no longer any pressure to keep things up at such a fast pace. Second, priorities switched to perfecting travel within lower Earth orbit. So, to this end, the Soviets focused on space stations and the US on the space shuttle. We'll be looking at these topics in a future video. But for now, since our focus is on the moon, we are going to jump ahead to the '90s and early 2000s, which is when robotic missions to the moon resumed, albeit quite sporadically at first, starting with the Hiten orbiter sent by Japan, making Japan the third country to successfully send a spacecraft to the moon. Next came two more orbiters, Clementine and Lunar Prospector, both sent by the US. These two are notable in that they were the first to detect the presence of ice on the moon near its poles. And then finally, for this period, we get the Smart 1 orbiter sent by the European Space Agency in 2003. But it was in the year 2007 that lunar exploration really started to ramp up with the arrival of China's first orbiter, Chang'e 1, and Japan's second, Selene. In fact, ever since 2007, the moon has been continuously monitored by at least one orbiting spacecraft, usually more than one. Take note that the number shown in the purple line represents the number of spacecrafts orbiting the moon during any given year. So, in 2007, it was two, but in 2008, it went up to three, because that's when India launched its first lunar orbiter, Chandrayaan 1. Now, Chang'e 1, Selene, and Chandrayaan 1 were not meant to be long-term orbiters. So, during 2009, all three were purposefully programmed to crash into the moon. But before the last one did so, a new orbiter arrived, the US's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. This one is actually still orbiting the moon to this very day and has provided us with the highest-resolution maps of the moon to date. Now, I won't go through every orbiter added since then, but I do want to point out two recent ones, because they were both sent by countries who are relatively new to space exploration. There's South Korea's Danuri orbiter, which arrived in 2022, and Pakistan's iCube-Q 2024. China is planning to send another orbiter this summer, so once that happens, there will be a total of 11 spacecrafts orbiting the moon at the same time, the most ever. You can see the full list here. Now, I didn't mention it earlier, but a lot of these names were chosen due to their connection to the moon. For example, Chang'e is the Chinese goddess of the moon, and Chandra is the Hindu god of the moon. Yan means vehicle, so Chandrayaan basically means moon vehicle. Let's now move over to this line here, which lists all of the recent surface activity on the moon, most notably any lunar rovers. Up until 2013, only two

### Segment 4 (15:00 - 20:00) [15:00]

countries, the Soviet Union and the United States, had ever soft-landed a spacecraft on the moon. Well, with the landing of Chang'e 3, China became the third country to do so. That mission included a rover named Yutu, which means Jade Rabbit. It operated until 2017. However, in 2019, Chang'e 4 arrived with Yutu 2, which is still operating on the moon to this day. This particular mission is also notable in that it was the first mission to land on the far side of the moon. Next up, India became the fourth country to soft-land on the moon when Chandrayaan 3 successfully did so in 2023. It brought with it the Pragyan rover. Then, the following year, Japan became the fifth and most recent country to soft-land on the moon with the arrival of SLIM, which stands for Smart Lander for Investigating Moon. It brought with it two short-term mini rovers, LEV-1, which moved by hopping, and the baseball-sized LEV-2, which crawled. Now, the Chang'e 7 mission that I mentioned earlier is going to include not only an orbiter, but also a lander with some kind of rover and perhaps a flying vehicle, the exact details of which have not yet been released. Okay, we're now ready to talk about the Artemis program, which is the first program in over 50 years to send humans to the moon. It's named after the Greek goddess of the moon, who was the twin sister of Apollo. And its history goes back to the Constellation program, which was approved by George W. Bush in 2004, but then canceled by Obama in 2011. One thing that came out of that program, though, was a design for a new deep-space crew vehicle called Orion. Thus, when the Artemis program was approved by the first Trump administration in 2017, it incorporated the Orion into its plan, as well as a new rocket based on the Space Shuttle program called the Space Launch System, or SLS. A third component, the service module, which provides Orion with power and propulsion, has been designed by the European Space Agency. All three of these new pieces of hardware were tested for the very first time in November of 2022, during the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission. Everything went well, which is why in 2026, we've now moved on to the first crewed flight, Artemis 2. Now, in between Artemis 1 and 2, there were two other related missions of note, both by private companies. The first by Intuitive Machines, and the second by Firefly Aerospace. You see, this time when humans land on the moon, the plan is for private companies to land the necessary supplies and equipment ahead of time. These two missions tested out this idea, and as such, they mark the first time that commercial companies have soft-landed on the moon. So, as you can see, in just a little more than a decade, we've gone from only two countries to have landed on the moon to five countries, plus two companies, soon to be followed by several more. The other thing that private companies will be helping out with when it comes to future Artemis missions is providing the 21st century version of this, the all-important lunar lander. Two designs are currently in the works, one by Elon Musk's SpaceX and one by Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin. Now, originally, the plan was for humans to land on the moon next year, during the Artemis 3 mission, but now Artemis 3 is going to be just a crewed test flight using the new lunar lander, and it will take place within lower Earth orbit, which means that Artemis 4, currently scheduled for 2028, will be the landing mission. During that mission, the plan is to have two astronauts land on the moon, one of which will be the first-ever woman to do so, and two astronauts to stay in lunar orbit. Now, it is possible that mission could be delayed, but there is now some pressure to make sure it happens fairly soon, because the Chinese have stated that they hope to land humans on the moon around 2030. So, yet again, we have a bit of a space race. As to what things will look like further out, it's hard to say. Initially, the plan was to build a space station around the moon called Gateway, but rumor has it that that's likely to get canceled, and instead, the focus will be on building a permanent moon base only. Okay, so that was a look at several of the most important missions to the moon, including Artemis 2, which is happening right now. Once again, if you want to get a copy of this brand new timeline of space exploration chart, just head over

### Segment 5 (20:00 - 20:00) [20:00]

to usefulcharts. com right now. Or simply click the link in the description or pinned comment. Thanks for watching.