List Of Missions To Minor Planets
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - List Of Missions To Minor Planets
OR:
List Of Missions To Minor Planets on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

List of missions to minor planets is a listing of spaceflight missions to
minor planets According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a minor planet is an astronomical object in direct orbit around the Sun that is exclusively classified as neither a planet nor a comet. Before 2006, the IAU officially used the term ''minor ...
, which are category of astronomical body that excludes planets, moons and comets, but orbit the Sun. Most missions to minor planets have been to asteroids or dwarf planets. Spacecraft visits to minor planets have mostly been flybys, and have ranged from dedicated missions to incidental flybys and targets of opportunity for spacecraft that have already completed their missions. The first spacecraft to visit an asteroid was
Pioneer 10 ''Pioneer 10'' (originally designated Pioneer F) is an American space probe, launched in 1972 and weighing , that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. Thereafter, ''Pioneer 10'' became the first of five artificial objects to ach ...
, which flew past an unnamed asteroid on 2 August 1972; a distant incidental encounter while the probe was en route to
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
. The first dedicated mission was ''
NEAR Shoemaker ''Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous – Shoemaker'' (''NEAR Shoemaker''), renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laborator ...
'', which was launched in February 1996, and entered orbit around
433 Eros Eros (minor planet designation: (433) Eros), provisional designation is a stony asteroid of the Amor group and the first discovered and second-largest near-Earth object with an elongated shape and a mean diameter of approximately . Visi ...
in February 2000, having first flown past
253 Mathilde Mathilde (minor planet designation: 253 Mathilde) is an asteroid in the intermediate asteroid belt, approximately 50 kilometers in diameter, that was discovered by Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa at Vienna Observatory on 12 November 1885. It h ...
. ''NEAR'' was also the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid, surviving what was intended to be an impact with Eros at 20:01 on 12 February 2001 at the planned end of its mission. As a result of its unexpected survival, the spacecraft's mission was extended until 1 March to allow data to be collected from the surface. Many minor planets are in two rings: *Asteroid belt, between 2-3 AU *Kuiper belt, between 30 and 60 AU


See also

*
List of minor planets and comets visited by spacecraft The following tables list all minor planets and comets that have been visited by robotic spacecraft. List of minor planets visited by spacecraft A total of 17 minor planets (asteroids, dwarf planets, and Kuiper belt objects) have been visit ...
* List of missions to comets


References

{{Asteroids
Missions to minor planets Mission (from Latin ''missio'' "the act of sending out") may refer to: Organised activities Religion *Christian mission, an organized effort to spread Christianity * Mission (LDS Church), an administrative area of The Church of Jesus Christ of ...