2004 in Science - Space Exploration

Space Exploration

• January 3 - NASA's Spirit, the first of two Mars Exploration Rovers, lands successfully on Mars.
• January 24 - NASA's Opportunity, the second of the Mars Exploration Rovers, lands successfully on Mars.
• March 2 - NASA report that the area where their Mars probe Opportunity touched down shows unmistakable signs of contact with water in the geological past.
• March 2 - ESA's Rosetta mission launches, aiming to land on Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014.
• March 4- NASA's Spirit finds evidence of past contact with water in volcanic rocks on Mars.
• April 1 - The Genesis probe closes and seals its particle collection instrument, and begins to return to Earth.
• June 11 - Cassini-Huygens, the NASA/ESA mission to Saturn, makes a flyby of one of Saturn's small outer moons, Phoebe.
• June 21 - SpaceShipOne, the first civilian space ship is launched in California, reaching an altitude of 100 km (62 mi), just passing the edge of space.
• July 1 - The Cassini-Huygens space probe arrives at Saturn and begins its nominal 4 year mission after successfully reaching orbit.
• August 2 - NASA successfully launches the MESSENGER probe on its 5 year trip to Mercury.
• September 8 - The Genesis spacecraft returns to Earth with captured solar wind particles, but crash-lands because of a failure to deploy any parachute.
• October 4 - SpaceShipOne wins the Ansari X Prize after reaching an altitude of over 100 km (62 mi) for the second time in less than five days.
• November 15 - The Smart 1 space probe reaches orbit around the Moon. It is the first European space mission to do so.
• December 25 - The Cassini probe successfully drops the Huygens probe, sending it onto a trip to land on Saturn's moon Titan.