What mission has gone farthest in space, and what were its discoveries? Which country funded it?

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• 
  Harlene Flores
  Oct 02, 2011

  In February 1998, NASA’s Voyager I set the record for the farthest in space that a man-made object has gone. This was previously held by Pioneer 10, which held the record for about 25 years before being surpassed by Voyager 1.

  Voyager 1 was launched by the US on the 5th of September 1977 and was actually a twin of another space craft launched sixteen days earlier, the Voyager 2. The mission of Voyager 1 was to investigate various properties of the two outermost planets and their satellites and for the case of Saturn, its rings. Voyager 1 reached its closest distance to Jupiter on March 5, 1979 while its closest distance to Saturn was reached on November 12, 1980. It was able to take thousands of images of both Jupiter and Saturn that led to discoveries of active volcanoes on Io, one of Jupiter’s moons as well as other findings. About ten years later, as Voyager 1 goes farther and farther away from the sun, it was able to take a series of images of the solar system. To date, Voyager 1 and its twin are still sending communications through NASA’s DSN or Deep Space Network.

  As for manned space missions, the farthest to date are the NASA missions to the moon, the last of which is Apollo 17, launched on December 7, 1972. After the much celebrated first lunar landing by Apollo 11 on July 17, 1969, six other successful landings on the moon followed. Apollo 17’s purpose was to explore geological materials and they were able to obtain several material samples as well as various photographs. Astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt used the Lunar Rover, which was first used in Apollo 15, and travelled a distance of about 18 miles. Several studies were done on the various lunar landings and some have helped man to learn more about the moon and space. There are still, however, many things out there that man needs to explore to understand more about space.
  

  http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1977-084A http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo17/index.html

• 
  Brian Dodson
  Sep 27, 2011

  Voyager I is the furthest out, with a present distance of about 120 astronomical units. It is a NASA probe (USA)