First contact seven missions that gave us our first real look at alien worlds

Using original photographs from the golden era of space travel, a new book unveils NASA’s thrilling first spaceflights

Astronaut Jim Lovell died this month, aged 97, one of the last of the original pioneers of space exploration. He missed out on Nasa’s early Mercury missions but was selected for the Gemini programme,

How our knowledge of these worlds beyond the Solar System has exploded in the last three decades

WORLD SPACE WEEK SPECIAL

(Photograph taken around 1960) Well, 1957 arrived and, having deliberately fluffed two 11-plus exams to avoid Bala Grammar School, I attended Corwen Secondary School. We were told that we were the fir

New Horizons was the first mission sent to explore Pluto, conducting a fly-by in July 2015. It was then redirected for a close pass of a much smaller Kuiper Belt object, Arrokoth, in January 2019. Tod