Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Earth to be orbited by an artificial satellite ("Luna 10"), followed by Mars in 1971 ("Mariner 9"), Venus in 1975 ("Venera 9"), Jupiter in 1995 ("Galileo"), the asteroid 433 Eros in 2000 ("NEAR Shoemaker"), Saturn in 2004 ("Cassini–Huygens"), and Mercury and Vesta in 2011 ("MESSENGER" and "Dawn" respectively). "Dawn" is orbiting the asteroid–dwarf planet Ceres as of 2015. The first probe to land on another Solar System body was the Soviet "Luna 2" probe, which impacted the Moon in 1959. Since then, increasingly distant planets have been reached, with probes landing on or impacting the surfaces of Venus in 1966
Akaa Solar System Scale Model man-made spacecraft) and the concrete pillar representing its location is at the center of the neighbouring town Viiala, approximately 7 km away from the Sun. The speed of light in the scale model is exactly 10 cm/second, so walking the 50-meter distance from the Earth to Sun "at light speed" takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds. In 2018 scale model of Proxima Centauri -star was added to Akaa Solar System Scale Model. Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf star and the nearest star to our Solar System. It is located 4.24 light-years away and in the model's scale it has