Future & Planned Missions
Missions in cruise, planned, or proposed — MMX, Comet Interceptor, DESTINY+, and studied concepts.
- AIM (concept)Concept / proposedESA (concept study)
ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission — the original European orbiter half of the AIDA collaboration, meant to observe the DART impact in real time. It was not funded in 2016, but its science was largely revived and reshaped as the Hera mission.
- Type
- Rendezvous · orbiter (concept)
- CAESAR (concept)Concept / proposedNASA (proposed; Cornell)
A NASA New Frontiers proposal to return a sample from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko — the comet Rosetta explored. It was a finalist in the New Frontiers 4 competition but was not selected (Dragonfly was chosen instead).
- Type
- Sample return (proposed)
- Comet InterceptorPlannedESA / JAXA
An ESA (with JAXA) fast-class mission that will wait at the Sun–Earth L2 point for a suitable target, then fly by a pristine, dynamically-new comet — ideally one entering the inner Solar System for the first time, or even an interstellar object.
- Type
- Flyby (multi-probe)
- DESTINY+PlannedJAXA
A JAXA technology-demonstration and flyby mission that will test advanced ion propulsion en route to a flyby of 3200 Phaethon — the rock-comet source of the Geminid meteor shower — studying its dust.
- Type
- Flyby (technology demonstration)
- Don Quijote (concept)Concept / proposedESA (concept study)
An early-2000s ESA planetary-defense concept — a two-spacecraft study in which an impactor (Hidalgo) would strike an asteroid while an orbiter (Sancho) measured the deflection. It was never built, but it prefigured the AIDA/DART–Hera approach.
- Type
- Impactor + orbiter (concept)
- JAXA
JAXA's planned mission to the moons of Mars — it will study Phobos and Deimos and return a sample of Phobos to Earth, testing whether the Martian moons are captured asteroids or debris from a giant impact.
- Type
- Rendezvous · lander · sample return