What was the most important Space Mission?

sward

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I know the moon landing often gets hailed as the most important mission, but is it really? Are there other game changers out there? Were the safety tests even more important then the mission itself?
 
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In my humble opinion, the moon landing was an important mission and amazing achievement especially for the United States during a very tumultuous time.

Sward, for me personally... I'm a HUGE fan of the launch of The Hubble space telescope. When I consider all the images and overall understanding of the universe that we have gotten from that amazing, amazing telescope, I can't help but be in awe at the end product of all that work.

I'm just not sure if that would be considered a "mission"... What I AM sure of, is that there are also a lot of missions I am unaware of.. So my counter question would be:

What would be yours, or, anyone else's most important mission of choice?
 
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Speaking of Hubble, I had a picture come across my desk that I believe taken by Hubble. and found it very beautiful and fascinating. All it said was "Heartbeat of the crab nebula". Has anyone else seen this photo and have we figured out what that energy wave-" heart beat" actually is?
 
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ALL the LandSATs from LandSAT 1 launched from Vandenburgh AFB in 1972 over 48yrs ago to upcoming launch of LandSAT 9, they've ALL contributed to managing a MULTITUTDE of scientific endeavors FREE to anyone on planet Earth to enable us to TAKE CARE of our ONLY HOME, Earth itself> All else paies w/respect to this endeavor, stare at the stars, but we ALL live on SpaceShip Earth> PS I designed the MSS as a kinematic truss JITTER PROOF but B4 that I designed an IMPULSE Load Cell to CALIBRATE THRUSTERs on APOLLO moon lander OR NO ONE was going to the Moon or come back
 
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I know the moon landing often gets hailed as the most important mission, but is it really?
We are goal-oriented, so the landing is the best fit for importance, IMO. Apollo 1 made it even that much more significant, not to mention the pressure to beat the other guys, which would have indeed had some geopolitical repercussions, no doubt, had we not taken those extra risks. It's amazing that the Saturn had such an impeccable track record.

It's perhaps like deciding which sailing mission was the most important. But which ever one it may be, I expect it would be the one that actually found a new world, not that they would have called it a "New World", of course. ;)
 

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How about Voyager 1 and 2, our first objects to leave the solar system, in a poetic quest to find intelligent life? And Apollo 8, the first mission to leave the Earth's gravitational hold and reach the moon, with so many technological "firsts"? Each of these missions also gave us a mind-boggling new perspective on our home planet, with Apollo 8's "Earthrise" photo and Voyager 1's "Pale Blue Dot"image of the Earth as a “tiny speck in the cosmos” (NASA Science). The missions explored new frontiers and at the same time made us look back at the Earth in a way that may help us save our home planet from ourselves.
 
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Catastrophe

"Science begets knowledge, opinion ignorance.
"What was the most important Space Mission?"

All depends on what you mean by important? To whom? All humanity?

All missions are important to homo sapiens but not necessarily important to the "best interests" of fellow "sapiens" if there are any.

If not, then it does not matter what sapiens destroys in its ever increasing lust to modify this solar neighbourhood. Mine (dig) away my friends and upgrade our neighbourhood for personal profit. That is our nature.

Cat.
 
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Oct 23, 2020
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I assume one of the most important missions has ever been made was on April the 12th 1961.
It was the mission when humanity visited space for the first time. It was the beginning of all we can chat here about.
 
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Go a step back to launch of 1st Sputnik Fall 1957> As a freshman starting college in Munich, Germany, it inspired me to pursue a career in S/C instrument design so when I took a job at RocketDyne in 1964 I was prepared w/a BSME/Design to design an Impulse Load Cell to Calibrate Thrusters of Moon Lander OR no one was going to Dock-In-Space to accomplish the mission, then went on to SBRC (Santa Barbara Research Center) to design MSS MultiSpectralScanner for 1972 LandSat, 1st satelite to scan entire planet Earth, so NASA has almost 50yrs of scientific data on Earth for multiple uses for FREE by scientific community to show levels of pollution & misuse> Use of S/C to manage Earth is arguably the most important mission
 
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Go a step back to launch of 1st Sputnik Fall 1957> As a freshman starting college in Munich, Germany, it inspired me to pursue a career in S/C instrument design so when I took a job at RocketDyne in 1964 I was prepared w/a BSME/Design to design an Impulse Load Cell to Calibrate Thrusters of Moon Lander OR no one was going to Dock-In-Space to accomplish the mission, then went on to SBRC (Santa Barbara Research Center) to design MSS MultiSpectralScanner for 1972 LandSat, 1st satelite to scan entire planet Earth, so NASA has almost 50yrs of scientific data on Earth for multiple uses for FREE by scientific community to show levels of pollution & misuse> Use of S/C to manage Earth is arguably the most important mission
Yeah, I completely agree with you. The investment of NASA is enormous. Like you said it has been an investment in space development for 50 years. Frankly to say I am a great fan of NASA and Space X but we should not forget the history of space development and mention the first mission in space where the human took part in. It was a real breakthrough in space science and in space technology. Yes it was not so important like missions NASA has completed but still for that time (1961) that was a fantastic achievement .
 
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For me, the most important space mission is the extraction of minerals and the development of technology. Because now, looking at what is happening in the world, it seems to me that we will not soon fly into space. We are not going for development but for degradation. And it would be cool to extract minerals from a motor trader in space and not on our planet. To transport them is the same number of jobs as much as development and new technologies. And all those chatter about space exploration, the search for new planets is such a delusion, we need to think and take care of our home! Instead of looking for aliens. So I hope that we will still develop and not sit on the Internet)
 
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For me, the most important space mission is the extraction of minerals and the development of technology. Because now, looking at what is happening in the world, it seems to me that we will not soon fly into space. We are not going for development but for degradation. And it would be cool to extract minerals from a motor trader in space and not on our planet. To transport them is the same number of jobs as much as development and new technologies. And all those chatter about space exploration, the search for new planets is such a delusion, we need to think and take care of our home! Instead of looking for aliens. So I hope that we will still develop and not sit on the Internet)

Well, mining on other space objects, it seems to me, is no less important than the disposal of garbage and waste on our planet. Some waste cannot be completely disposed of, and their disposal is poisoning our planet. Logically, why not use the possibility of space travel to organize burials somewhere else? Our planet will become cleaner, animals, birds, fish, insects will cease to die in such quantities due to human activity, or rather, its results.
 
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This is an interesting question. To which it is impossible to give a definite answer.
Most important to whom? Or what for?
For the development of space technology? Any mission can do here. And it even seems to me that the unsuccessful ones are more important. Awareness of mistakes. But landing on the moon can be crucial. For common people? There can be many options here too. Launching satellites for communication? Maybe. Launching satellites for mapping and GPS? Sure! How would we be without it now? Too broad a question in which everyone can find their answer
 

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