Sun and planet images courtesy NASA except asteroid and comet, courtesy ESA. Source: Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Additional Reporting by Lillian Steenblik Hwang.
Sun and planet images courtesy NASA except asteroid and comet, courtesy ESA. Source: Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Additional Reporting by Lillian Steenblik Hwang. Illustration by Katie Peek
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The U.S. is still the only country that’s sent people to the moon, but more nations are steadily joining us in space. South Korea sent up its first satellite last year. In the fall, India launched a probe that could make it the fourth country to Mars. All told, 13 have done indigenous space missions—that’s with spacecraft and rockets they designed and built themselves.

Sun and planet images courtesy NASA except asteroid and comet, courtesy ESA. Source: Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Additional Reporting by Lillian Steenblik Hwang.

A Catalog of Interplanetary Firsts

Sun and planet images courtesy NASA except asteroid and comet, courtesy ESA. Source: Jonathan McDowell, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Additional Reporting by Lillian Steenblik Hwang.

_This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of _Popular Science.

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