# What is the best NASA mission of all time?

> Crewed flights compete with robots that outlived their own engineers. Distance, discovery and difficulty pull the answer three ways.

*By YPB Team · Published August 23, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-nasa-mission-of-all-time*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Apollo 8** — score 1000/1000
   The first crewed flight to leave Earth orbit, which circled the Moon at Christmas 1968.
2. **Viking 1** — score 780/1000
   Made the first successful landing on Mars in 1976 and kept transmitting for six years.
3. **Galileo** — score 738/1000
   Orbited Jupiter for eight years and found evidence of an ocean under the ice of Europa.
4. **James Webb Space Telescope** — score 639/1000
   Unfolded its mirror a million miles from Earth in 2022 and now sees the earliest galaxies.
5. **Apollo 11** — score 511/1000
   The first crewed landing on another world, in July 1969.
6. **Apollo 13** — score 511/1000
   A failed landing that became the agency's most-studied rescue.
7. **Hubble Space Telescope** — score 511/1000
   Launched in 1990 with a flawed mirror, repaired in orbit, and still returning science more than thirty years on.
8. **Mercury-Atlas 6** — score 443/1000
   John Glenn's 1962 flight, the first time an American orbited the Earth.
9. **Voyager** — score 443/1000
   Two probes launched in 1977 that toured the outer planets and are now the only human objects in interstellar space.
10. **Artemis II** — score 365/1000
   Sent four astronauts around the Moon in April 2026, the first crewed flight beyond Earth orbit since Apollo.
11. **Curiosity** — score 365/1000
   Landed in Gale Crater in 2012 using a rocket-powered sky crane and is still driving.
12. **New Horizons** — score 275/1000
   Flew past Pluto in 2015 after nine years in transit, turning a smudge into a mapped world.
13. **Perseverance** — score 170/1000
   Cached samples for a future return to Earth and flew the first aircraft on another planet.
14. **The Space Shuttle Programme** — score 170/1000
   135 flights that built the International Space Station and launched and repaired Hubble.
15. **Cassini-Huygens** — score 46/1000
   Orbited Saturn for thirteen years, landed a probe on Titan, and ended by flying into the planet.

Tags: science, space, nasa, astronauts