Orbiter
Encyclopedia
Asteroids
- NEAR ShoemakerNEAR ShoemakerThe Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker , renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a...
(orbited 433 Eros433 Eros433 Eros is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1898, and the first asteroid to be orbited by a probe . It is an S-type asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size, the second-largest NEA after 1036 Ganymed, and belongs to the Amor group.Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid, the first known...
, eventually landed but was not designed to do so) - HayabusaHayabusawas an unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis....
(studied 25143 Itokawa25143 Itokawa25143 Itokawa is an Apollo and Mars-crosser asteroid. It was the first asteroid to be the target of a sample return mission, the Japanese space probe Hayabusa.-Discovery and naming:...
, technically not an orbiter, but rather followed the asteroid in its orbit around the Sun)
Mars
- Mariner 9Mariner 9Mariner 9 was a NASA space orbiter that helped in the exploration of Mars and was part of the Mariner program. Mariner 9 was launched toward Mars on May 30, 1971 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and reached the planet on November 13 of the same year, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit...
- Mars 2Mars 2The Mars program was a series of Mars unmanned landers and orbiters launched by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s.The Mars 2 and Mars 3 missions consisted of identical spacecraft, each with an orbiter and an attached lander; they were the first human artifacts to impact the surface of Mars...
- Mars 3Mars 3The Mars 3 was an unmanned space probe of the Mars program, a series of unmanned Mars landers and orbiters launched by the Soviet Union in the early 1970s....
- Mars 5
- Viking 1Viking 1Viking 1 was the first of two spacecraft sent to Mars as part of NASA's Viking program. It was the first spacecraft to successfully land on Mars and perform its mission, and until May 19, 2010 held the record for the second longest Mars surface mission of 6 years and 116 days .- Mission :Following...
- Viking 2Viking 2The Viking 2 mission was part of the American Viking program to Mars, and consisted of an orbiter and a lander essentially identical to that of the Viking 1 mission. The Viking 2 lander operated on the surface for 1,281 Mars days and was turned off on 11 April 1980 when its batteries failed...
- Phobos 2
- Mars Global SurveyorMars Global SurveyorThe Mars Global Surveyor was a US spacecraft developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched November 1996. It began the United States's return to Mars after a 10-year absence. It completed its primary mission in January 2001 and was in its third extended mission phase when, on 2...
- 2001 Mars Odyssey2001 Mars Odyssey2001 Mars Odyssey is a robotic spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars. The project was developed by NASA, and contracted out to Lockheed Martin, with an expected cost for the entire mission of US$297 million. Its mission is to use spectrometers and electronic imagers to hunt for evidence of past or...
- Mars ExpressMars ExpressMars Express is a space exploration mission being conducted by the European Space Agency . The Mars Express mission is exploring the planet Mars, and is the first planetary mission attempted by the agency. "Express" originally referred to the speed and efficiency with which the spacecraft was...
- Mars Reconnaissance OrbiterMars Reconnaissance OrbiterMars Reconnaissance Orbiter is a NASA multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and Exploration of Mars from orbit...
Moon
- Luna 10Luna 10Luna 10 was a Luna program, robotic spacecraft mission, also called Lunik 10.The Luna 10 spacecraft was launched towards the Moon from an Earth orbiting platform on March 31, 1966. It was the first artificial satellite of the Moon...
- Explorer 33Explorer 33Explorer 33 was a spacecraft launched by NASA on July 1, 1966 on a mission of scientific exploration. Originally intended for a lunar orbit, mission controllers worried that the spacecraft's trajectory was too fast to guarantee lunar capture...
- Lunar Orbiter 1Lunar Orbiter 1The Lunar Orbiter 1 robotic spacecraft, part of the Lunar Orbiter Program, was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions...
- Luna 11Luna 11Luna 11 was an unmanned space mission of the Soviet Union's Luna program. It is also called Lunik 11.Luna 11 was launched towards the Moon from an earth-orbiting platform and entered lunar orbit on 27 August 1966...
- Luna 12Luna 12-External links:*...
- Lunar Orbiter 2Lunar Orbiter 2The Lunar Orbiter 2 spacecraft was designed primarily to photograph smooth areas of the lunar surface for selection and verification of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions...
- Lunar Orbiter 3Lunar Orbiter 3The Lunar Orbiter 3 was a spacecraft launched by NASA in 1967, designed primarily to photograph areas of the lunar surface for confirmation of safe landing sites for the Surveyor and Apollo missions...
- Lunar Orbiter 4Lunar Orbiter 4Lunar Orbiter 4 was designed to take advantage of the fact that the three previous Lunar Orbiters had completed the required needs for Apollo mapping and site selection...
- Explorer 35Explorer 35Explorer 35 was a spin-stabilized spacecraft instrumented for interplanetary studies, at lunar distances, of the interplanetary plasma, magnetic field, energetic particles, and solar X rays. It was launched into an elliptical lunar orbit. The spin axis direction was nearly perpendicular to the...
- Lunar Orbiter 5Lunar Orbiter 5Lunar Orbiter 5, the last of the Lunar Orbiter series, was designed to take additional Apollo and Surveyor landing site photography and to take broad survey images of unphotographed parts of the Moon's far side...
- Luna 14Luna 14-External links:*...
- Luna 19Luna 19Luna 19 , was an unmanned space mission of the Luna program. Luna 19 extended the systematic study of lunar gravitational fields and location of mascons . It also studied the lunar radiation environment, the gamma-active lunar surface, and the solar wind...
- Explorer 49Explorer 49Explorer 49 was a 328 kilogram satellite launched on June 10, 1973 for longwave radio astronomy research. It had four 230-meter long X-shaped antenna elements, which made it one of the largest spacecraft ever built....
- Luna 22Luna 22Luna 22 was an unmanned space mission, part of the Soviet Luna program, also called Lunik 22.Luna 22 was a lunar orbiter mission...
- HitenHitenThe Hiten Spacecraft , given the English name Celestial Maiden and known before launch as MUSES-A , part of the MUSES Program, was built by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science of Japan and launched on January 24, 1990...
- Clementine
- Lunar ProspectorLunar ProspectorThe Lunar Prospector mission was the third selected by NASA for full development and construction as part of the Discovery Program. At a cost of $62.8 million, the 19-month mission was designed for a low polar orbit investigation of the Moon, including mapping of surface composition and possible...
- Lunar Reconnaissance OrbiterLunar Reconnaissance OrbiterThe Lunar Precursor Robotic Program is a program of robotic spacecraft missions which NASA will use to prepare for future human spaceflight missions to the Moon. Two LPRP missions, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite , were launched in June 2009...
- SMART-1SMART-1SMART-1 was a Swedish-designed European Space Agency satellite that orbited around the Moon. It was launched on September 27, 2003 at 23:14 UTC from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana. "SMART" stands for Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology...
- SELENESELENESELENE , better known in Japan by its nickname after the legendary Japanese moon princess, was the second Japanese lunar orbiter spacecraft. Produced by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science and the National Space Development Agency , both now part of the Japan Aerospace Exploration...
- Chang'e 1
- Chang'e 2Chang'e 2Chang'e 2 is a Chinese unmanned lunar probe that was launched on 1 October 2010. It was a follow-up to the Chang'e 1 lunar probe, which was launched in 2007. Chang'e 2 was part of the first phase of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, and conducted research from a 100-kilometer-high lunar orbit...
- Chandrayaan I
Sun
- Pioneer 5Pioneer 5Pioneer 5 was a spin-stabilized space probe in the NASA Pioneer program used to investigate interplanetary space between the orbits of Earth and Venus. It was launched on March 11, 1960 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Launch Complex 17a at 13:00:00 UTC with an on-orbit dry mass of 43 kg...
- Pioneer 6
- Pioneer 7
- Pioneer 8
- Pioneer 9
- Helios probesHelios probesHelios-A and Helios-B , were a pair of probes launched into heliocentric orbit for the purpose of studying solar processes. A joint venture of the Federal Republic of Germany and NASA, the probes were launched from the John F. Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Dec. 10, 1974,...
- ISEE-3
- Ulysses
- WIND
- SOHOSolar and Heliospheric ObservatoryThe Solar and Heliospheric Observatory is a spacecraft built by a European industrial consortium led by Matra Marconi Space that was launched on a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS launch vehicle on December 2, 1995 to study the Sun, and has discovered over 2100 comets. It began normal operations in May...
- ACEAdvanced Composition ExplorerAdvanced Composition Explorer is a NASA space exploration mission being conducted as part of the Explorer program to study matter in situ, comprising energetic particles from the solar wind, the interplanetary medium, and other sources. Real-time data from ACE is used by the Space Weather...
- GenesisGenesis (spacecraft)The Genesis spacecraft was a NASA sample return probe which collected a sample of solar wind and returned it to Earth for analysis. It was the first NASA sample return mission to return material since the Apollo Program, and the first to return material from beyond the orbit of the Moon...
- STEREO probes
Venus
- Venera 9Venera 9Venera 9 was a USSR unmanned space mission to Venus. It consisted of an orbiter and a lander. It was launched on June 8, 1975 02:38:00 UTC and weighed 4,936 kg...
- Venera 10Venera 10Venera 10 was a USSR unmanned space mission to Venus. It consisted of an orbiter and a lander. It launched on June 14, 1975 03:00:31 UTC.-Orbiter:The orbiter entered Venus orbit on October 23, 1975...
- Pioneer Venus Orbiter
- Venera 15Venera 15Venera 15 was a spacecraft sent to Venus by the Soviet Union. This unmanned orbiter was to map the surface of Venus using high resolution imaging systems...
- Venera 16Venera 16Venera 16 was a spacecraft sent to Venus by the Soviet Union. This unmanned orbiter was to map the surface of Venus using high resolution imaging systems...
- Magellan
- Venus ExpressVenus ExpressVenus Express is the first Venus exploration mission of the European Space Agency. Launched in November 2005, it arrived at Venus in April 2006 and has been continuously sending back science data from its polar orbit around Venus. Equipped with seven science instruments, the main objective of the...