National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Lunar and Planetary Science

Asteroids

General Information

Missions to Asteroids

Current and Past Missions

  • Psyche - Orbital Mission to Main Belt Asteroid 16 Psyche (2023)
  • Lucy - Flyby Mission to Multiple Trojan Asteroids (2021)
  • Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) - Kinetic Impact Test Mission to Asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos (2021)
  • LICIACube - Imaging Cubesat launched with DART (2021)
  • OSIRIS-REx - Sample Return Mission to Asteroid Bennu (2016)
  • Hayabusa2 - JAXA Sample Return Mission to Asteroid Ryugu (2014)
  • PROCYON - JAXA Small Satellite Asteroid Flyby Mission (2014)
  • Dawn - NASA Orbiter of Asteroids Ceres and Vesta (2007)
  • Rosetta - ESA Comet Mission, flew by asteroids Steins and Lutetia (2004)
  • Hayabusa (Muses-C) - ISAS (Japan) Sample Return Mission to Asteroid 25143 Itokawa (2003)
  • Genesis - NASA Discovery Solar Wind Sample Return Mission (2001)
  • Stardust - NASA Comet Coma Sample Return Mission, flew by asteroid AnneFrank (1999)
  • Deep Space 1 - NASA Flyby Mission to asteroid Braille (1998)
  • Cassini - NASA/ESA Mission to Saturn through the Asteroid Belt (1997)
  • NEAR - NASA Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous with 433 Eros
  • Galileo - NASA Mission to Jupiter via asteroids Gaspra and Ida

Future Missions

  • NEA Scout - Flyby CubeSat Mission to Near Earth Asteroid (2022)
  • Hera - Follow-up Mission to Asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos(2024)

Data

Press Releases

[USA.gov] NASA - nasa.gov