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A knowledge platform for everything above Earth — astronomy, space, the night sky, celestial events, mythology, and astrology as a clearly separate cultural tradition.

Astronomy is presented as scientific, evidence-based, and sourced. Astrology is presented as cultural, symbolic, and interpretive — never as proven science.

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Understanding Small-Body Missions

Learning path

Understanding Small-Body Missions

How we reached the asteroids and comets — the flybys, orbiters, landers, impactors, and sample-return missions that explored them, from Giotto at Halley to OSIRIS-REx at Bennu and DART at Dimorphos. Built on real NASA/JPL, ESA, and JAXA mission data that reuses the platform's spacecraft, rockets, asteroids, and comets; planned missions claim no results they have not achieved and nothing is fabricated.

Beginner

1.1Why explore small bodies?Asteroids and comets are pristine leftovers of planet formation — and potential hazards.
1.2Flyby missionsThe quickest way to reach a new target: a single high-speed pass.
1.3Orbiters and rendezvousStaying with a body to map it in detail — NEAR, Dawn, Rosetta.
1.4LandersTouching down on a low-gravity surface — Philae, NEAR, the Hayabusa touchdowns.

Intermediate

2.1Impactor missionsDeliberately striking a body — to look inside it, or to deflect it.
2.2Sample returnBringing pieces of an asteroid or comet back to Earth's laboratories.
2.3The Hayabusa lineJAXA's pioneering asteroid sample-return missions, Hayabusa and Hayabusa2.
2.4OSIRIS-REx at BennuNASA's first asteroid sample return — 121.6 grams of a carbon-rich world.

Advanced

3.1Comet missionsFrom Giotto's first close-up of Halley to Rosetta orbiting comet 67P.
3.2Planetary defenseDART's kinetic impact and Hera's follow-up — testing asteroid deflection.
3.3What returned samples revealWater, organics, and amino acids in pristine asteroid material.
3.4Future missionsMMX, Comet Interceptor, Psyche, and the missions still to come.

Related entities

Space mission
OSIRIS-REx
OSIRIS-REx collected a sample from the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and returned it to Earth in 2023.
Space mission
Rosetta
Comet orbiter & lander · ESA · launched 2004.
Returned sample
Ryugu Sample (Hayabusa2)
5.4 grams of surface and subsurface material from the carbonaceous asteroid 162173 Ryugu, returned by Hayabusa2 in 2020. The pristine, water- and organic-bearing grains contain amino acids and predate the Solar System's planets.
Mission class
Sample-Return Mission
A mission that collects material from a small body and brings it back to Earth for laboratory study — Hayabusa (Itokawa), Hayabusa2 (Ryugu), OSIRIS-REx (Bennu), and Stardust (comet Wild 2).

Continue learning

Understanding Asteroids →Understanding Comets and Small-Body Reservoirs →