Space Exploration and Astronomy

Omid (meaning 'hope' in Persian) was Iran's first domestically manufactured satellite, launched on February 2, 2009, aboard an Iranian-built Safir-2 rocket. This marked a significant milestone in Iran's space program.

NASA's New Horizons spacecraft was the first mission to Pluto. It launched in 2006 and performed its historic flyby of Pluto on July 14, 2015 (not 2016, but close enough for when this question was written). New Horizons provided the first close-up images and data of Pluto and its moons.

ISRO received the 2015 Space Pioneer Award from the National Space Society (NSS) for achieving Mars orbit on its first attempt with the Mars Orbiter Mission. This made India the first Asian nation to reach Mars orbit.

The Columbus Laboratory was a European Space Agency project that took approximately 25 years to develop and cost around $2 billion. It's a science laboratory module attached to the International Space Station.

Apollo 11 was the first spacecraft to land humans on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbited above in the Command Module.

Charles Simonyi was indeed the next space tourist after 2006, flying to the ISS in 2007. He was a Microsoft billionaire who paid for his trip to space.

Dr. Kalpana Chawla first went into space on November 19, 1997, as a mission specialist on STS-87 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia. She was the first Indian-born woman to fly in space.

Larry Newman and Maxie Anderson, along with Ben Abruzzo, completed the first successful transatlantic balloon flight in 1978 aboard the Double Eagle II. The other names are fictional or unrelated to ballooning.

Russia began construction of the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur Oblast, Far East Russia. This new spaceport was built to reduce Russia's dependence on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which it had to rent after the Soviet Union's dissolution.

 The name of the robotic explorer which was feared to crash during its landing on mars on Christmas Day of 2003 is Beagle 2.

SRE-1 (Space Recovery Experiment-1) was ISRO's space capsule successfully recovered in 2007. It tested reusable spacecraft technology, reentry systems, and navigation. It's not an aircraft, submarine, or ballistic missile. This was a key milestone for India's human spaceflight ambitions.

SUDFy-38135539 (also known as HUDF.YD3) is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) identifier for a galaxy which has been calculated (as of October 2010) to have a light travel time of 13 billion years with a present comoving distance of around 30 billion light-years.

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to land on the moon as part of NASA's Apollo 11 mission. Armstrong's walk on the lunar surface remains one of the most significant milestones in human history and space exploration.

NASA's Viking 1 was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and complete its mission in 1976. While the Soviet Mars 3 touched down in 1971, it failed almost immediately after landing.