Editing 1980s (section)

===Space exploration===
[[File:Space Shuttle Columbia launching.jpg|thumb|The [[Space Shuttle Columbia|Space Shuttle ''Columbia'']] seconds after engine ignition, 1981]]
American interplanetary probes continued in the 1980s, the Voyager duo being the most known. After making a flyby of Jupiter in 1979, they went near Saturn in 1980–1981. ''[[Voyager 2]]'' reached Uranus in 1986 (just a few days before the ''Challenger'' disaster), and Neptune in 1989 before the probes exited the Solar System.

No American probes were launched to Mars in the 1980s, and the [[Viking program|Viking]] probes, launched there in 1975, completed their operations by 1982. The Soviets launched two Mars probes in 1988, but they failed.

The arrival of [[Halley's Comet]] in 1986 was met by a series of Soviet, Japanese and [[European Space Agency]] (ESA) probes, namely [[Halley Armada]].

After a six-year hiatus, American space flights with astronauts resumed with the launch of the [[Space Shuttle Columbia|Space Shuttle ''Columbia'']] in April 1981. The shuttle program progressed smoothly from there, with three more orbiters entering service in 1983–1985. But that all came to an end with the [[Space Shuttle Challenger disaster|tragic loss]] of the [[Space Shuttle Challenger|''Challenger'']] ([[STS-51-L]]) on 28 January 1986, taking with it seven astronauts, including [[Christa McAuliffe]], who was to have been the first teacher in space. In full view of the world, a faulty O-ring on the right solid rocket booster allowed hot gases to burn through the external fuel tank and cause it to explode, destroying the shuttle in the process. Extensive efforts were made to improve [[NASA]]'s increasingly careless management practices, and to make the shuttle safer. Flights resumed with the launch of [[Space Shuttle Discovery|''Discovery'']] in September 1988.

The Soviet program with cosmonauts went well during the decade, experiencing only minor setbacks. The [[Salyut 6]] space station, launched in 1977, was replaced by [[Salyut 7]] in 1982. Then came ''[[Mir]]'' in 1986, which ended up operating for more than a decade, and was destined to be the last in the line of Soviet space stations that had begun in 1971. One of the Soviet Union's last "superprojects" was the [[Buran (spacecraft)|''Buran'' space shuttle]]; it was only used once, in 1988.