Doomed Space Missions: Here Are Several Dead Probes from the Moon's Beresheet to Voyager

Aside from sending people into space, humankind has successfully deployed robots and space probes throughout the Solar System and even beyond. Experts say that deploying robots is far safer and easier than deploying people since robots can withstand considerably harsh conditions than humans.

However, some individuals are curious as to what happened to the old space probes. Therefore, we have compiled a list of some of the space probes that have gone missing.

1. Beresheet (Moon)

During the descent of Israel's Beresheet lunar lander in 2019, a problem prevented the probe from slowing down for a peaceful landing. Instead, Space.com said the probe collided with the ground, thereby killing the mission before it had begun. The Beresheet project would have been the first privately built spacecraft to land on the moon if it had been successful.

2. Cassini (Saturn)

Cassini was decommissioned in 2017 in one of the most spectacular ways imaginable. NASA engineers commanded the probe to dive directly into Saturn after 13 successful years orbiting the ringed planet. Cassini unveiled exotic realms where methane flows like water and ice geysers erupt into space over its lifetime. It also photographed the mesmerizingly beautiful dance of Saturn's moons, at least two of which, Titan and Enceladus, may harbor life.

Cassini ran out of fuel in its closing days, and NASA did not want an out-of-control probe smashing into (and polluting) one of the moons. According to NASA, Cassini likely burnt up and disintegrated within minutes of impacting Saturn's atmosphere. So the spacecraft sent photographs back to Earth along with other data it collected throughout its catastrophic plummet. The final image, above, shows a looming Saturn, which is large in Cassini's frame of view and greets Cassini on its final descent. The rings can be seen towards the bottom of the photograph. The planet is lighted by light reflected off the rings in the upper half of the image, which displays it at night when it is facing away from the Sun.

3. Huygens (Titan)

NASA tasked the Huygens probe to descend through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Some astrobiologists believe Huygens could harbor microbial life after piggybacking to Saturn onboard Cassini. Huygens obtained data on Titan's atmosphere, wind, electromagnetic activity, and chemistry during its parachute-slowed fall on January 14, 2005. After landing, scientists were not sure if the surface would be liquid or solid; it turned out to be the latter - the probe began taking pictures of its strange surroundings. Titan is still the furthest surface on which humans have landed a spaceship. Huygens transmitted data for just over an hour from this location before going silent.

4. MESSENGER (Mercury)

Orbiters are more likely than rovers to go out with a bang. Yes, Cassini's fall into Saturn's atmosphere was thrilling, but imagine the sound a craft making as it slams on the surface of a rocky world at full speed. That is what occurred to NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which was the first to orbit Mercury. It took four years to encircle the closest planet to the Sun, culminating in a face-to-face meeting with the entire planet. John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory said MESSENGER sent a photograph of Jokai, a crater roughly the size of the English Channel, on April 30, 2015. It was the last image the pioneering spacecraft would deliver before crashing just north of the planet's Shakespeare basin later that day. It was pretty theatrical, and the bard would have approved.

5. Opportunity (Mars)

Talk about foreboding. While Cassini's final image shows a bright swath of Saturn's surface, NASA's Opportunity rover's final look was nothing more than a flash of light through a black Martian sky. Opportunity's 14-year mission on Mars came to an end in 2018, when the rover encountered a severe dust storm. Apart from a slightly brighter region in both photographs, there is not much to see. Gizmodo said the Sun was almost completely obscured by the planet-wide dust storm that caused Oppy's doom.

6. Spirit (Mars)

Spirit, like several of NASA's Mars rovers, lasted far longer than it was supposed to. And when it ultimately succumbed to the Red Planet's hospitality, it was not because of the planet's incredibly thin atmosphere or freezing temperatures. It was not even a bad dust storm like the one Opportunity had to deal with. Instead, Spirit was stuck by some soft of dirt that acted like quicksand and trapped him in 2009. Hence, NASA classified Spirit as a fixed science instrument in January 2010.

7. Venera 13 (Venus)

The USSR launched a series of probes to Venus decades before the other missions on this list. From 1961 until 1983, the Venera program (Russian for "Venus") included various flyby spacecraft, orbiters, and landers. Venera 9, 10, 13, and 14 were four of the landers that returned photos from the surface of Venus. Venera 13's photographs, on the other hand, were the first in color.

Venus has a surface temperature of about 900 degrees Fahrenheit and is under the pressure of dozens of Earth atmospheres. Venera 13 only lasted around two hours on the barren planet before returning to Earth with panoramic photographs. The terrain seems yellow due to the dense atmosphere in one of the photographs, which was in color. When the atmospheric effects are eliminated from the photograph, it displays a stretch of rock and dusty land, but not much else. At the center, a discarded lens cap and the lander's rim can be seen.

While NASA's Magellan spacecraft made it to Venus, it never made it to the planet's surface. Instead, it crashed into Venus' atmosphere in 1994 and burned up. Hopefully, the agency's future missions to Venus, VERITAS and DAVINCI+, will offer us with better views of the planet's hostile landscape.

8. Voyager (Outer Solar System)

The Voyager probes are on a one-way voyage out of the solar system, and their last photos were captured in 1990, albeit they are not completely dead. The image above was shot in February 1990, at 3.7 billion miles from the Sun, just 30 days before Voyager 1 - the farthest human-made object - turned down its cameras to save energy for the long journey ahead. (The spacecraft is still going strong, currently 14.2 billion miles from the Sun and detecting various strange phenomena.)

Carl Sagan proposed to NASA that one of the Voyager probes return to Earth, showing our planet as a "pale blue dot" in the immensity of space. Just half an hour before Voyager's cameras were turned off, this incredible depiction of humankind was shot. Is it worthwhile? Definitely.

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