NASA Missions

NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission — the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid (433 Eros) and, in an unplanned finale, the first to soft-land on one. It mapped Eros for a year before its controlled descent in 2001.

Type

Flyby · rendezvous · orbiter · landing

Launched

1996-02-17

A NASA New Millennium technology-demonstration mission that validated ion propulsion and autonomous navigation, then used them to fly past asteroid 9969 Braille and, most notably, comet 19P/Borrelly — returning some of the best comet-nucleus images of its time.

Type

Flyby (technology demonstration)

Launched

1998-10-24

NASA's comet sample-return mission — it flew through the coma of comet Wild 2, captured dust in aerogel, and parachuted the sample capsule to Earth in 2006: the first sample return from a comet, and the first return of solid material from beyond the Moon (NASA's Genesis had returned solar-wind atoms in 2004). Its extended mission (Stardust-NExT) later imaged the Deep Impact crater on Tempel 1.

Type

Flyby · sample return

Launched

1999-02-07

A NASA Discovery mission that released a 370 kg impactor into the path of comet 9P/Tempel 1 in 2005, excavating material from below the surface while the flyby spacecraft observed the impact — the first look inside a comet.

Type

Flyby · impactor

Launched

2005-01-12

A NASA Discovery mission and the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies — it used ion propulsion to orbit the giant asteroid 4 Vesta and then the dwarf planet 1 Ceres, the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt.

Type

Rendezvous · orbiter (two bodies)

Launched

2007-09-27

NASA's first asteroid sample-return mission — it orbited the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid Bennu, mapped it in detail, and used a touch-and-go manoeuvre to grab a large sample, returning 121.6 grams to Earth in 2023. The spacecraft continued on as OSIRIS-APEX to study the asteroid Apophis.

Type

Rendezvous · touch-and-go · sample return

Launched

2016-09-08

A NASA Discovery mission on a twelve-year tour of the Jupiter Trojans — ancient asteroids trapped at Jupiter's Lagrange points that are fossils of planet formation. It is the first mission to these bodies, with main-belt asteroid flybys along the way.

Type

Flyby (multiple targets)

Launched

2021-10-16

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test — the first full-scale planetary-defense demonstration. The spacecraft deliberately crashed into Dimorphos, the small moon of asteroid Didymos, in 2022, measurably shortening its orbit and proving that a kinetic impactor can deflect an asteroid.

Type

Impactor (planetary defense)

Launched

2021-11-24

A NASA Discovery mission to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche — possibly the exposed core of a shattered protoplanet. Using solar-electric propulsion, it will orbit and map a world made largely of metal, a type never before visited.

Type

Rendezvous · orbiter

Launched

2023-10-13

The extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft — it flew within about 700 km of the small, hyperactive comet 103P/Hartley 2 in 2010, revealing a peanut-shaped nucleus jetting carbon-dioxide-driven plumes.

Type

Flyby (extended mission)

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)

A NASA SIMPLEx pair of small spacecraft designed to fly by binary asteroids. Built to share Psyche's launch, the twins were left without a viable trajectory when Psyche slipped by a year, and the mission was cancelled with the spacecraft put into storage.

Type

Flyby (twin smallsats)