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The twin Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft continue exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. In the 33rd year after their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from Earth and the Sun than Pluto. Voyager 1 and 2 are now in the "Heliosheath" - the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. Both spacecraft are still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep Space Network (DSN).
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Mars Odyssey is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. The opportunity to go to Mars comes around every 26 months, when the alignment of Earth and Mars in their orbits around the sun allows spacecraft to travel between the two planets with the least amount of energy.
2001 Mars Odyssey launched on April 7, 2001, and arrived at Mars on October 24, 2001, 0230 Universal Time (October 23, 7:30 pm PDT/ 10:30 EDT).
Odyssey's primary science mission took place February 2002 through August 2004, and the orbiter began its extended missions on August 24, 2004.
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Mars Express set off on 2 June 2003
At this time of year the positions of the two planets made for the shortest possible route, a condition that occurs once every 26 months.
The intrepid spacecraft began its six-month journey from the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan on board a Russian Soyuz/Fregat launcher.
Having escaped the Earth's pull, Mars Express was sent on course for the Red Planet, cruising at a velocity of 10 800 kilometres and hour, relative to Earth. Six days before arrival on 25 December 2003, Mars Express ejected the Beagle 2 lander which was to have made its own way to the correct landing site on the surface.
The orbiter successfully entered Martian orbit on 25 December. First it manoeuvred into a highly elliptical capture orbit from which it moved into its operational near polar orbit later in January 2004.
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NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They landed on Mars January 3 and January 24 PST, 2004 (January 4 and January 25 UTC, 2004). The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars. The spacecraft are targeted to sites on opposite sides of Mars that appear to have been affected by liquid water in the past. The landing sites are at Gusev Crater, a possible former lake in a giant impact crater, and Meridiani Planum, where mineral deposits (hematite) suggest Mars had a wet past.
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Cassini completed its initial four-year mission to explore the Saturn System in June 2008 and the first extended mission, called the Cassini Equinox Mission, in September 2010. Now, the healthy spacecraft is seeking to make exciting new discoveries in a second extended mission called the Cassini Solstice Mission.
The mission
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter blasted off from Cape Canaveral in 2005, on a search for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time. While other Mars missions have shown that water flowed across the surface in Mars' history, it remains a mystery whether water was ever around long enough to provide a habitat for life.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will study the history of water on Mars
After a seven-month cruise to Mars and six months of aerobraking to reach its science orbit, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter began seeking out the history of water on Mars with its science instruments. The instruments zoom in for extreme close-up photography of the martian surface, analyze minerals, look for subsurface water, trace how much dust and water are distributed in the atmosphere, and monitor daily global weather.
These studies are identifying deposits of minerals that may have formed in water over long periods of time, looking for evidence of shorelines of ancient seas and lakes, and analyzing deposits placed in layers over time by flowing water. The mission is examining whether underground martian ice discovered by the Mars Odyssey orbiter is the top layer of a deep ice deposit or a shallow layer in equilibrium with the atmosphere and its seasonal cycle of water vapor.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be able to look at small-scale features
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Venus Express is ESA's first mission to Earth's nearest planetary neighbour, Venus. The mission was born after ESA asked for proposals, in March 2001, suggesting how to reuse the design of the Mars Express spacecraft.
The guidelines were extremely strict. The mission would have to run to a tight timeframe because it had to reuse the same design as Mars Express, and the same industrial teams that worked on that mission. It would have to be ready to fly in 2005.
Out of a number of promising proposals, ESA selected Venus Express. What made the mission especially attractive was that many of the spare instruments developed for ESA's Mars Express and Rosetta missions could be used to achieve Venus Express's science objectives, which were to study the atmosphere in great detail.
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At 5:32 p.m. EDT, June 18, 2009, an United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket roared off the launch pad at Launch Complex 41 to begin the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite missions to the moon.
The LRO instruments return global data, such as day-night temperature maps, a global geodetic grid, high resolution color imaging and the moon's UV albedo. However there is particular emphasis on the polar regions of the moon where continuous access to solar illumination may be possible and the prospect of water in the permanently shadowed regions at the poles may exist. Although the objectives of LRO are explorative in nature, the payload includes instruments with considerable heritage from previous planetary science missions, enabling transition, after one year, to a science phase under NASA's Science Mission Directorate.
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Since the main Deep Impact mission, there are intervals of interest: Hibernation, several Cruise segments, multiple Earth Flybys, EPOCh Observations, Approach, Hartley 2 Encounter, Playback and Analysis. They are described below. Although an extensive search for comet Boethin was carried out, it could not be found and the spacecraft has been directed to comet Hartley 2 instead. The revised mission will take about two years longer than the original.
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AKATSUKI (PLANET-C) is the next planetary exploration project for the Martian orbiter NOZOMI. This project's main purpose is to elucidate the mysteries of the Venusian atmosphere. Though often referred to as Earth's sister planet in terms of size and mass, Venus is actually very different. It is veiled in carbon dioxide, with a high temperature and thick sulfuric-acid clouds. Clarification of the causes for this environment will provide us with clues to the understanding of the birth of Earth and of its climate changes. Therefore, Venus is a very important subject for exploration.
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Stardust-NExT Introduction
After travelling 3.5 billion miles, the Stardust spacecraft made history by capturing images of asteroid Annefrank, collecting samples of comet Wild 2 and successfully returning them to Earth, and now crosses the finish line with spectacular images of comet Temple 1 maximizing science for years to come.
Congratulations for making this mission not only historical but memorable from start to finish.
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To become the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury, MESSENGER followed a path through the inner solar system, including one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus, and three flybys of Mercury. This impressive journey is returning the first new spacecraft data from Mercury since the Mariner 10 mission over 30 years ago. Here you can find details about that journey, the MESSENGER spacecraft, and the instrument payload.
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Dawn, as a mission belonging to NASA
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The International Rosetta Mission was approved in November 1993 by ESA's Science Programme Committee as the Planetary Cornerstone Mission in ESA's long-term space science programme. The original mission goal was to rendezvous with comet 46P/Wirtanen. As a result of the launch postponement (to March 2004) a new target was selected: Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. On its 10 year journey to the comet, the spacecraft will pass close to two asteroids: 2867 Steins (in 2008) and 21 Lutetia (in 2010).
Rosetta operations are carried out from ESA's Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt. Orbit determination for all mission phases is also performed by ESOC.
Rosetta was sucessfully launched on 2 March 2004 by an Ariane-5 G+ from Kourou, French Guiana. In order to gain enough orbital energy to reach its target four gravity assists are required: one by Mars and three by Earth. The long mission duration has required the introduction of extended hibernation periods.
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Planetary exploration is a historic endeavor and a major focus of NASA. New Horizons is designed to help us understand worlds at the edge of our solar system by making the first reconnaissance of Pluto and Charon - a "double planet" and the last planet in our solar system to be visited by spacecraft. Then, as part of an extended mission, New Horizons would visit one or more objects in the Kuiper Belt region beyond Neptune.
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The Space Shuttle Program Mission Management Team voted unanimously to proceed toward Endeavour's scheduled liftoff at 3:47 p.m. EDT Friday. Mike Moses, chair of the Prelaunch Mission Management team, reported that it was a very short meeting and everything is in great shape and ready to go.
"We're ready to go and we're looking forward to Friday's launch," Moses said.
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The Juno mission is the next scientific investigation in the NASA New Frontiers Program. The mission's primary science goal is to significantly improve our understanding of the formation and structure of Jupiter. By advancing our knowledge of the giant planet, we will also dramatically advance our understanding of the origins and early evolution of our own solar system at the most fundamental level.
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Spaceflight Real-time Simulations and Information
