Three missions to Mars this summer, from NASA, China, and the United Arab Emirates, will join dozens of active and inactive spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit.
Spaceship orbiting the sun
Solar Orbiter launched in February to study the sun and its poles.
Parker solar probe graze the edge of our star.
STEREO A and STEREO B track solar storms.
Tesla Roadster lazily orbiting the sun.
Spitzer I observed newborn planets and retired this year.
Kepler They counted planets until it closed in 2018.
Ulises he was the first to study the poles of the sun.
Mercury
BepiColombo It is turning inward to arrive in 2025.
Delivery courier It mapped the planet and crashed in 2015.
Mariner 10 He was the first to arrive at Mercury, in 1974.
Venus
Akatsuki he studies Venus, who rotates slowly, and launches himself with the IKAROS solar sail.
Venus Express investigated the Venusian atmosphere.
Magellan He mapped the planet and plunged through its clouds.
Vega 1 and Vega 2 he dropped landers before passing Halley’s Comet.
Pioneer Venus 1 probes dropped in 1978.
Mariner 10 flew in 1974.
Venera 7 was the first to land softly. More Venera spacecraft followed in the 1970s and early 1980s.
L1 Lagrangian Point
A point of balance between the sun and Earth.
DSCOVR look back at the sunlit Earth.
ACE study particles from the sun and beyond.
SOHO Observe space weather and find new comets.
WIND study the solar wind.
LISA Pathfinder held two free-falling weights, a test to detect gravitational waves.
Genesis it caught solar wind particles and smashed them into Earth.
ISEE-3 it was the first to orbit point L1, in 1978. The spacecraft was revived by technoarchaeologists in 2014.
land
the International Space Station presides over 2,600 smaller satellites in Earth’s orbit.
Hubble I just turned 30.
Chandra watch the stars explode in X-ray bursts.
TESS Search for planets and orbits in resonance with the moon.
Heading to mars
Perseverance can launch this week to tour a dry lake and release the Ingenuity helicopter.
Tianwen-1 launched on July 23 to orbit, land, and rove.
hope launched on July 19 to orbit Mars.
the Rosalind Franklin The rover was postponed until 2022.
Moon
Chandrayaan-2 study the lunar surface. Their Vikram the lander crashed near the south pole of the moon in 2019.
Chang’e-4 was the first to land softly on the other side of the moon, and released the Yutu-2 homeless. It communicates with the Earth through Queqiao satellite relay.
Chang’e 5-T1 passed the moon and sent a test capsule to Earth.
Chang’e-3 landed with him Yutu homeless.
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter He maps the surface and spotted the Apollo landers.
The twin ARTEMIS The spacecraft studies Earth’s magnetosphere.
Beresheet crashed upon landing in 2019.
LADEE He studied the moon dust and crashed on the other side.
Reflux and Flow lunar gravity mapping.
Chang’e-1 mapped the moon. Chang’e-2 orbited and then went to the L2 Lagrangian point.
LCROSS dived into the plume of an accident Centaur rocket.
Chandrayaan-1 found water
INTELLIGENT-1 Propelled ion tested.
Lunar Prospector searched for polar ice.
Clementine Tested equipment and cameras.
Hiten it counted dust and crashed in 1993. Selene Followed to study the evolution of the moon.
Moon 24 It was the last of many successful Luna missions. It returned a sample to Earth in 1976.
Explorer 49 It was the last American mission to the moon in two decades, until Clementine in 1994.
L2 Punta Lagrangiana
An equilibrium point behind Earth.
Spektr-RG Examine the X-ray sky.
Gaia maps a billion stars.
Herschel He scanned the stars in infrared.
Planck and WMAP he probed the cosmic microwave background.
Mars
View landed in 2018 and listen to marsquakes.
The ExoMars Trace gas orbiter sniffs methane and releases the condemned Schiaparelli Lander.
MAVEN study the history of Mars.
Mars Orbiter Mission, also called MOTHER or Mangalyaan, is India’s first mission to another planet.
Curiosity tour the Gale crater, an ancient Martian lake.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter study and photograph the Martian surface.
Mars express released the silence Beagle 2 Lander, who was only in 2015.
Mars Odyssey maps water and ice on Mars.
Phoenix landed in the Martian Arctic.
Opportunity Rover died in 2019.
Spirit The vehicle was trapped in the sand after touring Mars for six years.
Mars pathfinder landed and released Sojourner, the first rover on another planet.
Mars Global Surveyor mapped the planet.
Viking 1 and Viking 2 landed in 1976.
Mariner 9 it was the first spacecraft to orbit another planet.
Mariner 4 it was the first to pass to Mars.
Asteroids
OSIRIS-REx will hit the asteroid Bennu in October.
Hayabusa2 shot a hole in asteroid Ryugu, touched its surface and took a sample.
Chang’e-2 it orbited the moon and L2 before passing asteroid 4179 Toutatis.
Dawn He visited the asteroid Vesta and then mapped the dwarf planet Ceres.
Hayabusa sent dust from the asteroid Itokawa to Earth in 2010. His little one Minerva the lander could not reach the surface.
NEAR Zapatero flew by an asteroid before orbiting and landing on Eros.
Kites
Rosetta passed asteroids, followed comet 67P / CG and bounced and lost Philae lander on its surface.
Deep Impact crashed a impactor against comet Tempel 1 in 2005. Renowned EPOXY, the spacecraft flew to visit Comet Hartley 2.
Stardust It flew past an asteroid, returned a sample of Comet Wild 2, and took a second look at Tempel 1.
Deep space 1 it passed the Braille asteroid in 1999 and Comet Borrelly in 2001.
Giotto, Suisei, Sakigake, Vega 1 and Vega 2 converged on Halley’s Comet in 1986.
ISEE-3 was renamed International kite explorer and he was the first to visit a comet, in 1985. It passed through Earth again in 2014.
Jupiter
Juno rotate in constant sunlight to study Jupiter.
Galileo It was the first to orbit and crashed in 2003.
Ulises, Cassini and New Horizons Jupiter passed on his way to other destinations.
Pioneer 10 was the first to reach Jupiter in 1973, followed by Pioneer 11 in 1974 and Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 in 1979
Saturn
Cassini took stunning pictures of Saturn and its moons, dropped the Huygens landed on Titan and finally dove into the rings and disappeared.
Pioneer 11 was the first to pass Saturn in 1979, followed by Voyager 1 in 1980 and Voyager 2 in 1981
Uranus
Voyager 2 flew in 1986.
Neptune
Voyager 2 Neptune and his moon Triton passed in 1989.
Pluto
New Horizons He glimpsed the frozen heart of the dwarf planet during a flyby in 2015.
kuiper belt
New Horizons Ultima Thule, now called Arrokoth, passed in 2019, and will finally leave the solar system.
Interstellar space
Voyager 1 left our solar system in 2012.
Voyager 2 followed in 2018.
Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 They are almost there, but they are no longer in contact with Earth.
Note: This chart includes spacecraft currently operating beyond Earth orbit, as well as many crashed or inactive spacecraft from the past few decades. It skips Apollo missions, most spacecraft launched before Pioneer 10 in 1972, many Soviet moon and Venus missions, and some recent microsatellites. Illustrations not to scale.
