Last Updated on 3 January 2024

September events from the history of space flight

DateEvents
11979 – Pioneer 11 becomes first spacecraft to fly by Saturn
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72013 – NASA launches unmanned LADEE spacecraft from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia
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121970 – Luna 16 launched and becomes the first automatic spacecraft to return soil samples of the moon
1992 – Mae Jemison becomes the first African-American woman in space
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141959 – Soviet spacecraft Luna 2 becomes first craft to hard-land on a celestial object (the moon)
151968 – Soviet spacecraft Zond 5 launched and later becomes the first spacecraft to orbit the moon and return to Earth
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212003 – NASA’s 14-year Galileo mission to explore Jupiter and its moons ends with the spacecraft crashing by design into Jupiter at 108,000 mph
221976 – American probe Viking 2 discovers Martian polar cap is all frozen water
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241970 – Luna 16 returns first lunar samples by unmanned spacecraft
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