The first spacecraft to intentionally impact another celestial body, Luna 2 struck the Moon's surface near the Aristides, Archimedes, and Autolycus craters on September 14, 1959, delivering Soviet pennants to the lunar surface.

Following its 2010 launch, Chang'e 2 mapped the Moon's surface in high resolution, flew by asteroid 4179 Toutatis, and became China's first spacecraft to reach the Sun-Earth Lagrange point L2.

A robotic spacecraft launched in 2007 that became the first to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies - the asteroid Vesta from 2011-2012 and the dwarf planet Ceres from 2015 until its mission ended in 2018.