On Aug. 7, 1980, NASA's Viking 1 spacecraft ended its epic and historic mission on the Red Planet.

Viking 1 was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars. It was one of two Viking missions NASA launched in 1975 to go look for evidence of life on Mars. Each of the Viking missions were composed of an orbiter and a lander. Viking 1's orbiter took photos of the Martian surface that helped NASA decide where to drop the lander.

• Viking 1: The Historic First Mars Landing in Pictures

After four years of orbiting Mars, the orbiter ran out of attitude-control propellant, so NASA had to shut it down. The lander continued its scientific observations for another three years before it lost contact with NASA in 1983.

Why it mattered

NASA's Viking 1 mission is most well-known for making the first truly successful landing on Mars, but the mission was more than just a huge lander. Viking 1 actually consisted of two spacecraft, the Viking 1 Lander and the Viking 1 Orbiter. The two spacecraft rode to Mars together, with the lander separating from the orbiter ahead of its landing on the Red Planet.

In fact, NASA sent FOUR Viking spacecraft to Mars in total. The Viking 2 mission also carried both a Lander and Orbiter. But the Viking 1 probes were the first of that wave. The two orbiters were based on NASA's general Mariner 9 spacecraft bus, but more sophisticated. They carried three primary instrument suites: A two-camera imaging system; infrared spectrometer for water vapor mapping; and an infrared radiometer for thermal mapping.

The Viking missions were only planned to last 90 days, but both the lander and orbiter lasted years beyond their design lifetime. The Viking 1 Orbiter studied Mars for four years, orbiting the planet 1,488 times before shutting down on orbit 1,489 on Aug. 7, 1980.

The Viking 1 and Viking 2 Orbiters captured a combined 52,663 high-resolution photos of Mars, mapping about 97% of its surface with a resolution of about 984 feet (300 meters). They also snapped photos of Mars' two moons, Phobos and Deimos, in great detail, far surpassing what NASA achieved with the Mariner 9 Mars orbiter in 1971.

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On Aug. 6, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover successfully touched down on the Martian surface.

At the time, the Curiosity rover was the biggest and most ambitious Mars rover that NASA ever launched. Its landing involved a new kind of maneuver that had never been tried before using something called a "sky crane." Like previous rovers that have landed on Mars, Curiosity used a parachute and rocket engines to slow down as it descended through the Red Planet's atmosphere.

But while other rovers used airbags to cushion the last part of the fall, Curiosity's rocket-propelled sky crane hovered over the ground and gently lowered it with cables. Touchdown was confirmed at 1:31 a.m. EDT (0531 GMT), though it was 10:31 p.m. PDT on Aug. 5 at Curiosity's JPL control room.

• 15 Amazing Mars Photos by NASA's Curiosity Rover

Why it mattered

The Curiosity Mars rover was built by engineers and scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The space center's motto is ambitious: "Dare Mighty Things." With Curiosity, JPL may have dared more mightily than it ever had before.

First, there's the rover's immense size. It weighs nearly 1 ton on Earth and is the size of a small car. It's powered by a nuclear battery and was the first of a new family of massive rovers to land on Mars. The sky crane landing approach was a big departure from the direct touchdowns of the Viking landers, as well as the bouncy airbag landings of the Mars Pathfinder, Spirit and Opportunity missions.

It all had to go right autonomously during a time NASA called the "7 minutes of terror" — the time it took for the landing, which would happen faster than the rover could get instructions from flight controllers on Earth due to the signal travel time to reach Mars. And it all worked spectacularly.

Curiosity not only aced its landing at Gale Crater on Mars, but it changed Mars landings forever. NASA repeated the feat nine years later with the successful landing of the Perseverance rover at Jezero Crater on Mars in February 2021. Curiosity and Perseverance are the largest rovers ever to explore Mars and set a new benchmark for what is possible on other planets.

As of this writing, Curiosity has spent 14 years exploring Mars, drilling into rocks and finding new clues about water on Mars and the planet's potential habitability in the ancient past. It's still going strong, even if it got a rock stuck on its drill for a few days earlier this year.

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SpaceX launched the world's most powerful rocket on a critical 13th test flight late Friday, but there was no triskaidekaphobia on this mission.

The July 24 test launch, Space's Starship Flight 13 mission, sent a towering rocket the size of a 40-story skyscraper into space from South Texas, returned its massive Booster to Earth, and then — in a feat perhaps none saw coming — gently landed its Starship upper stage in the Indian Ocean, where it tipped over to float belly up on the sea.

"Starship is intact, floating in the ocean and transmitting telemetry!" SpaceX CEO Elon Musk wrote on X.

"That is a first," SpaceX spokesperson Dan Huot added in live commentary as a drone beamed stunning views of Starship bobbing in the waves. "That is the softest splashdown we have ever had with Starship in the Indian Ocean."

The splashdown capped what appeared to be a mostly successful test flight of SpaceX's biggest Starship ever. With a mighty roar, Starship Flight 13 lifted off from SpaceX's Starbase, Texas launch site at 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT) on a test flight that lasted just over one hour.

It was only the second flight of the company's new Starship Version 3 design, or V3, and SpaceX was hoping for a better outing than its first attempt in May. During that previous test, the Starship Flight 12 mission, the massive Super Heavy first-stage Booster suffered engine problems after stage separation and failed to make a water landing in the Gulf of Mexico. It crashed instead.

Lucky Flight 13

Friday's Starship Flight 13 mission fared a bit better.

SpaceX initially tried to launch Flight 13 on July 16, but the rocket aborted the try at the last second due to engine issues. SpaceX replaced some first-stage Raptor engines in time for a July 23 launch attempt, but waved off due to weather, setting the stage for Friday's successful liftoff.

Minutes into the flight, the Super Heavy Booster successfully separated from its Ship upper stage, aced a flip maneuver and returned to Earth. There was a problem during the landing burn. Only five engines appeared to fire when 13 were required to slow the Booster to landing speed. It hit the Gulf waters harder than planned, its camera views cutting out.

"It didn't look like we lit all 13 engines that we were planning for that initial landing burn," Huot said. "We were targeting a softer splashdown and, as you saw, it came in with quite a bit of velocity."

Starlink V3 makes a debut

Despite the Booster's rough landing, there were clear successes on Starship Flight 13.

While sailing on its suborbital trajectory, Flight 13's Ship upper stage deployed 20 next-generation Starlink Version 3 internet satellites — large, flat satellites equipped with laser communications links and expansive solar arrays that will replace SpaceX's current Starlink internet megaconstellation.

Starship is designed to launch 60 Starlink V3 satellites at a time, spitting them out through a slit-like payload bay door like a giant PEZ candy dispenser. All 20 Starlink V3 satellites deployed smoothly, with the last two switching on flashlights and looking back at their Ship carrier before floating off into orbital darkness. The satellites did not stay in space. They fell to Earth and burned up (by design) due to their suborbital flight path.

The Ship upper stage (which SpaceX also refers to as Starship) then reignited one of its six Raptor engines to test a critical engine relight capability that will allow future Starships to enter and leave orbit. The burn went off without a hitch — a milestone since SpaceX had not always performed the burn if a test didn't go smoothly.

Then it was time for reentry, with cameras beaming back stunning views of Starship wrapped in super-hot plasma as it fell back to Earth. The spacecraft executed a three-engine burn to flip over into a vertical landing position, but did shift down to two engines, then one before it toppled over to rest on the waves.

The sight of a floating Starship triggered a cacophony of cheers from SpaceX teams at Starbase and its Hawthorne, California rocket factory in the company's livestream. After all, Starships usually explode after they tip over.

"This is just the first time we've put a Starship into the water," SpaceX's Dan Huot said during live commentary. He called it SpaceX's "softest splashdown" ever. "This is a dream scenario for this team that's trying to get this heat shield data."

The heat shield isn't the only thing SpaceX's recovery team will be looking at.

Live views from Starship showed its six engines intact along with its flaps and other systems. Teams will be poring over what they can retrieve from the sea to help improve future Starship upgrades.

SpaceX is developing Starship to be a fully reusable launch system, a 407-foot-tall (124 meters) megarocket capable of taking Starlink fleets to orbit as easily as it lands NASA astronauts on the moon. That part is key.

NASA has tapped SpaceX's Starship to land its Artemis IV astronauts on the moon in 2028, but SpaceX has yet to ever complete an entire Earth orbit with Starship after 13 test flights and three years of launches. It's been a decade since Elon Musk first unveiled what SpaceX now calls Starship during a 2016 speech.

Over the next two years, SpaceX must not only send a Starship into orbit. The company also aims to return a Ship to Earth to catch it in the "chopsticks" of its Mechazilla launch pad at Starbase. (The company has already done so with its Super Heavy Booster stages.)

SpaceX also must successfully demonstrate in-space Starship refueling, complete an orbital tanker version of Starship, and finish a crewed lander version complete with a life support system that can keep astronauts alive on the moon. That's a lot on the Starship to-do list and NASA is watching.

"Congrats on getting Flight 13 underway," NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on X after the launch. "Excited for what will be learned from this mission. When Starship comes online, its capabilities will be game-changing, not least of which will be ensuring we never give up the Moon again!" In a lunar coincidence, Friday's launch coincided with the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 astronauts' return to Earth after their historic moon landing flight.

But for now, SpaceX is clearly celebrating.

"I'm a little over the moon right now," Huot said. "Wow. Lucky number 13. Hell of a great day for Starship."

Hey, Space Fans! Every weekend here at Space.com, you may have noticed we highlight the latest episode of the podcast This Week In Space, a TWiT show co-hosted by yours truly and my friend and colleague Rod Pyle, a space historian and editor of the National Space Society magazine Ad Astra.

This Week In Space episodes usually drop each Saturday, but this week we're doing something a bit different. To mark the 50th anniversary of NASA's Viking landings (Viking 1 touched down on Mars on July 20, 1976), Rod and I will host a special live taping of the podcast to discuss all things Martian starting at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT). It should last up to 90 minutes.

Joining us on the podcast will be:

• Dr. Pascal Lee, a planetary scientist, geologist and artist with the SETI Institute, Mars Institute and NASA Ames Research Center.
• Dr. Penny Boston, an astrobiologist and speleologist (the study of caves) with the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.

During our discussion, we'll touch on the personal and scientific impacts of NASA's Viking Mars landings and look at where Mars exploration may go in the modern age. We might even discuss the best places for the hunt for signs of life: the surface or inside Martian caves?

So if you're a Mars fan or a casual space aficionado, join us today at 1:30 p.m. EDT to get a detailed look at NASA's Viking Mars landings and their lasting impact on Martian exploration.

SpaceX is just a few days away from its first Starship test flight of the summer, and if you're hoping to watch the world's largest rocket lift off, you'll need to know where and when to tune in. But don't worry — we've got you covered.

The next Starship test flight, called Flight 13 (SpaceX doesn't appear to be superstitious), is scheduled to launch from the company's test site in Starbase, Texas near Boca Chica Beach on Monday, July 20. Liftoff is set for 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT).

As its name suggests, the upcoming flight will be the 13th test launch overall of SpaceX's Starship megarocket. It will be the second such flight this year, after the May 22 launch of Starship Flight 12. SpaceX is designing Starship, which stands more than 400 feet (121 meters) tall, to be a fully reusable rocket capable of launching missions to the moon, Mars or beyond.

NASA picked Starship to land its Artemis IV astronauts on the moon by 2028, and SpaceX has sold at least one Starship passenger flight to Mars as well. But before SpaceX can carry astronauts to other worlds with Starship, it has to complete a series of suborbital flights and, eventually, reach Earth orbit for in-flight fueling tests, docking demonstrations and more.

SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 is a suborbital test that will be the second flight of SpaceX's new V3 Starship. Below you'll find details on what time Flight 13 will launch, what the mission will do and a full timeline for the mission.

What time is SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 launch?

SpaceX is currently targeting the launch of Starship Flight 13 for no earlier than 6:45 p.m. EDT (2245 GMT) on Monday, July 20. (The company originally tried to lift off on Thursday, July 16, but that attempt was aborted at the last second.) However, the exact timing of the launch could change.

That's because SpaceX has a 90-minute window in which to launch Flight 13 from Starbase Pad 2. Liftoff could occur anytime between 6:45 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. EDT (2245 to 0015 GMT). SpaceX's launch webcast will begin 30 minutes before liftoff.

And remember, SpaceX likely has backup days, so the launch could slip a bit if needed. In that case, it would likely lift off at the same time — 6:45 p.m. EDT — and have a 90-minute window, as on the coming attempt.

Related: Read our SpaceX Starship and Super Heavy guide for a detailed look

Can I watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 launch?

Yes, you'll be able to watch SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 launch online, but you'll have your pick on where to watch.

SpaceX will provide its own livestream of the launch via its X account and the official Flight 13 mission page. If everything is on time, that livestream will begin at 6:15 p.m. EDT (2215 GMT) — 30 minutes before the planned Flight 13 liftoff.

Space.com will simulcast the SpaceX Flight 13 launch webcast on this page, as well as an our homepage and YouTube channel.

A prelaunch show

Now, if you need to get your Starship Flight 13 fix earlier than SpaceX's stream, a good place to look is the NASASpaceflight show: Its livestream will start several hours before liftoff.

The NASASpaceflight launch webcast will begin on July 20 at 3:45 p.m. EDT (1945 GMT). NASASpaceflight has a wealth of cameras installed around SpaceX's Starbase test facility, and the company will share up-close views and live commentary for many preflight activities.

In-person launch options

While SpaceX does not have an official Starship launch viewing site, there are several places where you can see the launch in person around the Starbase area.

For first-time spectators, I recommend watching Starship launch from near the Cameron County Amphitheater at Isla Blanca Park on South Padre Island, which is just across the bay from Starbase. The rocky beaches around the amphitheater offer a clear line of sight of the Starship launch pad, and there are often spectators on boats out of nearby Port Isabel offering a picturesque view. It's about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the launch site, and the park has bathrooms.

The traffic getting to South Padre Island (if you're not staying at a hotel on the island) can be heavy on launch days, so another option is watching from the shore in Port Isabel, which is home to Hopper Haus, a SpaceX-themed bar and grill that I can confirm makes awesome burgers.

There is also a shoreline stretch of Highway 48 between Brownsville and Port Isabel, from 6 to 8 miles (10 to 13 km) from the launch site, where you can pull up for the day to watch the launch. It's just the side of the highway, so you won't find amenities like bathrooms there. You can learn more about that at the site SpaceLaunchSchedule.com.

If you're looking for a more rustic experience (and have cash for a $200 ticket, though kids under 17 are $40), you can camp at the Rocket Ranch, which is 3.8 miles (6.1 km) from the Starbase launch site, and camp there for one day and night. It has two viewing locations available, one at an "Outpost" and the other on the campground itself. The Outpost location is the closest and has "unmatched media service," so you can stay connected. Larger four-day camping packages are also available. The ticket includes bus transportation from the ranch campground to a viewing site and back for one launch attempt. I've actually never visited this ranch, but I wanted to include it so you know it's an option. Be sure to read the full Rocket Ranch FAQ so you know what to expect.

How long is SpaceX's Starship Flight 13?

SpaceX's Starship Flight 13 test flight will last just over 1 hour and 5 minutes and should follow the same mission profile as the company's last test, Flight 12, in May. This will be the second flight of SpaceX's new Starship Version 3, or V3.

During Flight 12, the giant Super Heavy booster stage failed to return to Earth properly for a controlled landing and splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico (which the Trump Administration has renamed the Gulf of America). Instead, the booster crashed into the ocean.

"The booster’s primary test objective will be executing a successful launch, ascent, stage separation, boostback burn, and landing burn at an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America," SpaceX wrote in a mission overview. "There have been several modifications to hardware and software to address issues seen on the previous flight."

Starship Flight 13 will launch from SpaceX's new Pad 2 at Starbase, which the company upgraded with shorter, faster "chopsticks" — capture arms that can catch returning Starship Super Heavy boosters and Ship upper stages during landing, as well as lift vehicles into place on the pad for launch. Check out our full overview on how SpaceX changed Starship for V3 here.

SpaceX will not try to reach orbit with Starship Flight 13 or return its Ship back to Earth for a capture at the launch pad. Instead, both vehicles aim to make controlled descent and water landings, before falling over and sliding into the sea.

While the Super Heavy booster will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Boca Chica, the Ship upper stage will follow a suborbital trajectory for a target splashdown in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Western Australia.

During the flight, the Ship vehicle will attempt to deploy 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the company's newer and larger satellite-internet units, but they won't reach orbit. They will follow Starship's suborbital trajectory back down to Earth and burn up in the atmosphere.

Six of the Starlink V3 satellites are equipped with cameras to record live views of Starship and its heat shield and beam them back to Earth for analysis.

"For the first time, Starship will carry V3 Starlink satellites to space, which aim to greatly expand the network's capacity and user speeds. As part of this initial test, Starship is planned to deploy 20 satellites which will extend solar arrays and antennas and will attempt to connect with the larger Starlink constellation via high-capacity lasers," SpaceX wrote in the mission overview. "The Starlink satellites will be on the same suborbital trajectory as Starship and are expected to demise upon reentry approximately 20 minutes after deployment."

What if Starship Flight 13 can't launch?

If SpaceX can't launch Starship Flight 13 on July 20, the company likely has multiple backup opportunities. So, if bad weather or another technical issue delays launch, SpaceX could try again in the coming days.

Whichever date SpaceX launches Starship Flight 13, you will be able to follow the mission on Space.com. Be sure to return to Space.com on launch day for complete Starship Flight 13 coverage.

Editor's note: This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. ET on July 17 with the new target launch date of July 20.

Hey, space fans! For over 25 years, we here at Space.com have dedicated ourselves to bringing you the best space mission news, astronomical discoveries, night sky guides and out-of-this-world sci-fi. Now, we're launching into a whole new frontier. Yes, we have an app.

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WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. — For over 20 years, NASA's Swift space observatory has been conducting prolific science in orbit, hunting for signs of gamma-ray bursts — the most powerful explosions in the universe. Now, it's falling to Earth, doomed to a fiery death by the end of the year as its orbit decays.

But maybe not.

NASA, it turns out, has a daring rescue mission in the works, something never before attempted in space: the Swift Boost mission. The endeavor calls for an untested spacecraft built by the Arizona company Katalyst Space Technologies to rendezvous and dock with Swift — something the observatory was never designed to do — before the observatory falls back to Earth.

If all goes well, Katalyst's space tug (it's called Link) will lift the Swift observatory into a higher, safer orbit — one that will add years of life to the aging space telescope's mission. Liftoff is officially set for June 27, with Link launching on the last-ever Pegasus XL rocket, an air-launched booster built by Northrop Grumman.

"Frankly, I have to be honest: No one thought it was going to be possible," Shawn Domagal-Goldman, NASA's Astrophysics Division director, told reporters here on Wednesday (June 17). "No one thought we would get as far as we've already gotten today."

What stands out most is how quickly the mission came together.

It was just in September 2025 that NASA picked Katalyst to build a spacecraft capable of boosting Swift on a budget of $30 million. That was nine months ago. And now, the finished Link spacecraft — with its three robotic arms, three main Hall thrusters and a suite of other instruments — is packed aboard its Pegasus XL rocket and tucked on the belly of its L-1011 Stargazer carrier plane for a trip to its launch site in the South Pacific's Kwajalein Atoll.

"In the last nine months, we have gone from a clean sheet to a spacecraft that is currently integrated on a rocket on an airplane, ready to go to Kwaj for launch," said Kieran Wilson, Link's principal investigator at Katalyst Space, on Wednesday. "This is an absolutely unprecedented development timeline for this program."

Yet that "swift" timeline, if you will, is essential if NASA is to rescue the Swift space observatory.

NASA originally launched Swift (its full name is the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, after its late principal investigator) in 2004 on a $250 million mission to search the sky for gamma-ray bursts and other high-energy astrophysics phenomena in the cosmos. From its original orbit about 375 miles (600 kilometers) above Earth, Swift was a silent sentinel, ready to quickly pivot to new targets with unprecedented speed.

"Swift was designed to study gamma-ray bursts, short-lived flashes of high-energy light that release more energy in just a few seconds than the sun will in its entire lifetime," Swift principal investigator Brad Cenko told reporters Wednesday. "It's been extremely successful in this regard, detecting over 2,000 of these sources all the way out to the edge of the visible universe."

It was Swift that helped scientists confirm without a doubt that the heaviest elements we know of, including the shiny gold and platinum in the jewelry you're wearing right now, were forged by these explosive cosmic events, Cenko said. Swift was expected to last two years in orbit. It's well into its second decade now, and still in good health — well, except for that "falling out of space" part.

You see, Swift doesn't have thrusters, or a propulsion system of any kind. And over the years, an increase in solar activity — space weather from the sun — has puffed up Earth's atmosphere to create more drag on Swift than expected, pulling it down from its initial orbit.

Last year, the Swift mission team realized the space telescope was falling faster than expected. Without a rescue mission, Swift would crash to Earth by the end of this summer.

"It was okay for a generic spacecraft to come out of orbit," Domagal-Goldman said. "But this was not just any spacecraft. This is an observatory with unique capabilities for astrophysics … It is a swift observatory that can quickly pivot across the night sky to find things that go boom in the night."

"So we decided, yeah, we want to go save this one this time because of how special it is," he added.

A lot has to go right for Katalyst's Link spacecraft to rescue Swift.

The 937-pound (425-kilogram) spacecraft will launch into an initial testing orbit on June 27 and perform a series of checkouts to ensure that its basic systems (three main engines, 16 reaction control thrusters, solar arrays, robotic arms) are all working properly.

"We'll have a commissioning period of a few weeks, after which we will begin maneuvers in order to approach Swift," Wilson said.

Once Link reaches Swift's orbit, it will perform a series of proximity operations, dock, and then raise the space observatory to its initial orbit over the period of a several months. If that goes to plan, Swift could be back to performing science by this fall, Cenko said. (The telescope has been in a low-power mode to preserve what orbit it can since February.)

If Link is successful, Swift could get another five or more years of life in space. Link, meanwhile, will detach and be intentionally deorbited (meaning it will fall to Earth on purpose) to end its mission.

"All this is challenging and risky," Wilson said. "There's a lot of spacecraft that have had far longer development cycles with far more funding behind them that have failed for mundane reasons."

A lot of simple things can go wrong.

For example, the solar arrays on Link might malfunction, Wilson said. Swift has been in orbit for so long, its protective insulation blankets may be as brittle as glass and break when Link's robotic arms grab on, he added.

And then there's the sun. It was increased solar activity that put Swift in its perilous situation. That activity is ongoing. In fact, Swift may be one big solar storm away from doom if the sun fires off a major storm before Katalyst's Link can reach it.

Swift is on track to fall below an altitude of 186 miles (300 km) by October. At that point, it may be too low for Link to reach the observatory. A surprise solar storm could accelerate that fall, but NASA remains hopeful.

"At the moment, we think we have several months where Swift will be at a sufficiently high altitude to give Katalyst folks a great chance to capture and boost us," Cenko said.

Katalyst is banking on the future need for spacecraft servicing and life extension in space. This week, the company raised $12 million in funding to develop an even more capable spacecraft called Nexus, which it plans to "expand satellite servicing to multi-orbit, multi-mission operations."

"Over the last decade or so, we've gotten very good at launching things into space," said Robert Lamontagne, Katalyst's vice president for strategic partnerships. "Katalyst is here really to kind of demark the end of that throwaway model, and the start of a new model."

The first test flight of a Nexus mission could launch in 2027. Its target: a U.S. Space Force satellite called Rooster in geostationary orbit 22,236 miles (35,786 km) above Earth, much higher than the Swift observatory. That Nexus-1 mission will launch atop an Ariane 6 rocket next year.