Mission class · 7 missions

Orbiter Mission

A spacecraft that enters orbit around a small body to map it globally over time — NEAR at Eros, Dawn at Vesta and Ceres, Rosetta at comet 67P.

Definition

Entering and maintaining orbit around a target for global, long-term study.

Missions of this class

NEAR ShoemakerCompleted
NASA / JHU APL
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
RosettaCompleted
ESA
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
DawnCompleted
NASA / JPL
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
OSIRIS-RExExtended mission
NASA / University of Arizona / Lockheed Martin
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
PsycheActive
NASA / JPL / ASU
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
HeraActive
ESA
ESA's follow-up to DART and the European half of the AIDA collaboration — it is cruising to the Didymos–Dimorphos system to survey the crater DART left and measure Dimorphos's mass, turning the DART experiment into a well-characterised deflection.
Type
Rendezvous · orbiter (planetary defense)
Launched
2024-10-07
AIM (concept)Concept / proposed
ESA (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)

Sources

The primary and reference sources this topic draws on.

NASANational Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mission data, planetary science, space telescopes, and public-domain imagery.
Most NASA-produced imagery is in the public domain; individual items are checked for usage terms before publication.
ESAEuropean Space Agency
European missions, observatories, and space science imagery.