Exploration
Two robotic spacecraft are currently exploring asteroids up close: NASA's OSIRIS-REx is in orbit at asteroid Bennu and Japan's Hayabusa 2 is preparing to collect samples from asteroid Ryugu. Meanwhile, NASA's NEOWISE spacecraft, orbiting Earth, continues to improve on the most accurate survey of near-Earth objects every undertaken.
The Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based radar observatories also contibute regularly to our understanding of asteroids. Several more missions, including NASA's Psyche and Lucy, missions are in development to keep exploring these small worlds. Scientists also use ground-based radar to explore nearby asteroids whenever possible.
Exploration Highlights
- NASA's Galileo mission was the first spacecraft to fly past an asteroid. It flew past asteroid Gaspara in 1991 and Ida in 1993.
- NASA's Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR-Shoemaker) mission studied asteroids Mathilde and Eros; and the Rosetta mission encountered Steins in 2008 and Lutetia in 2010. Deep Space 1 and Stardust both had close encounters with asteroids.
- In 2005, the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa landed on the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa and attempted to collect samples. On June 3, 2010, Hayabusa successfully returned to Earth a small amount of asteroid dust now being studied by scientists.
- NASA's Dawn spacecraft, launched in 2007, orbited and explored asteroid Vesta for over a year. Once it left in September 2012, it headed towards dwarf planet Ceres, with a planned arrival of 2015. Vesta and Ceres are two of the largest surviving protoplanet bodies that almost became planets. By studying them with the same complement of instruments on board the same spacecraft, scientists will be able to compare and contrast the different evolutionary path each object took to help understand the early solar system overall.