Japanese (JAXA) Missions

JAXA's pathfinding asteroid sample-return mission — the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid and return material to Earth. Despite a cascade of failures (reaction wheels, a fuel leak, an intermittent ion engine, and a lost lander), it recovered more than a thousand microscopic grains of the asteroid Itokawa.

Type

Rendezvous · touchdown · sample return

Launched

2003-05-09

JAXA's follow-up to Hayabusa — a far more capable mission to the carbonaceous asteroid Ryugu. It deployed rovers and a lander, fired a projectile to make an artificial crater and sample subsurface material, and returned 5.4 grams of pristine, water- and organic-bearing rock. The spacecraft is now on an extended mission to a small fast-rotating asteroid.

Type

Rendezvous · lander · impactor · sample return

Launched

2014-12-03

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

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)

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)