First explorations into the planets
Human’s dream of stepping into the outer space has been long ago and Jules Verne - a famous fiction writer of the 19th century was the first to describe such journeys. However, it was not until 14 September 1959 when the first artificial object - Lunar 2 - reached the moon. It was a journey of around 36 hours. Then on 3 February 1966 Luna 9 - an unmanned space mission - achieved a soft landing on the moon and transmitted photographic data to Earth. Lunar 10 - a robotic spacecraft mission entered lunar orbit on April 3, 1966. On 20 July 1969, the first manned landing on the moon was made by Neil Armstrong. After his journey, a series of journeys to other planets were made. The first flyby - the flight of a spacecraft near a planet to record data - of Venus was made by Mariner 2 in 1962. Other flybies include that in 1965 for Mars by Mariner 4, 1973 for Jupiter by Pioneer 10, 1974 for Mercury by Mariner 10, 1979 for Saturn by Pioneer 11, 1986 for Uranus by
Voyager 2, 1989 for Neptune by Voyager 2.
1. Jules Verne was the first ______.
1. Jules Verne was the first ______.
