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On a mission

On the anniversary of the first man on the moon, and with the final space shuttle mission set to end Thursday, Wired.com takes a look back at the extraordinary amount of training astronauts go through before they are mission ready.

Here are all the missions NASA has sent past Earth orbit, for which it now watches and waits for data. Some will be finished in a few years, others have been flying for nearly 40, slowly gathering data and beaming it back to Earth, or potentially waiting to be discovered by someone else out there.

Take a seat in Nasa's Mission Control and command Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions by building space vehicles, launching missions, and testing your skills at docking in space and landing on the moon.

Dr John Olson from Nasa's headquarters in Washington DC tells Andy Duckworth about the agency's plans for the moon, Mars and one-way tickets into space.