Lander Mission

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

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

ESA's landmark comet mission — the first to orbit a comet nucleus and, via its Philae lander, the first to soft-land on one. It escorted comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko through perihelion for two years before its own controlled descent to the surface in 2016.

Type

Rendezvous · orbiter · lander

Launched

2004-03-02

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