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Sputnik
Who Launched It: Russia (Soviet Union)
It's purpose was to orbit Earth.
Sputnik's launched started the 'Space Race'. -
Viking
Who Launched It: the United States
Accomplishments: Viking 1 was the first successful mission to land on Mars (the Soviet Mars 3 lander survived for a few seconds after landing in 1971, but sent back no science data). The Viking 1 lander operated on Chryse Planitia until November 1982. The four Viking spacecraft provided numerous new insights into the nature and history of Mars, producing a vivid overall picture of a cold weathered surface with reddish volcanic soil.. -
Magellan
Who Launched It: the United States (Florida)
The Magellan spacecraft, which arrived at Venus in 1990, made the first global map of the surface of Venus as well as global maps of the planet's gravity field. The mission produced surprising findings about Venus, including a relatively young planetary surface possibly formed by lava flows from planet-wide volcanic eruptions. In Oct. 1994, the Magellan spacecraft intentionally plunged to the surface of Venus to gather data on the planet's atmosphere. -
Ulysses
Who Launched It: the United States
Accomplishments: Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of our Sun. The spacecraft used an unprecedented gravity assist maneuver at Jupiter to hurl itself out of the plane of the ecliptic and into its solar polar orbit. -
Polar
Who Launched It: the United States
Polar was launched to observe the polar magnetosphere and, as its orbit has precessed with time, has observed the equatorial inner magnetosphere and is now progressing toward an extended southern hemisphere campaign. -
ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer)
Planned to go on until 2024
Who Launched It: the United States
It is an explorer mission that was managed by the Office of Space Science Mission and Payload Development Division of NASA. -
Cassini-Huygens
Who Launched It: the United States
Mission to Saturn -
XMM-Newton
Who Launched It: French Guiana
XMM-Newton is the most powerful X-ray telescope ever placed in orbit. The mission is helping to solve many cosmic mysteries, ranging from enigmatic black holes to the formation of galaxies. -
Terra
Named for Earth
Who Launched It: the United States
It is used to collect data about Earth's changing climate -
GRACE (the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment)
Who Launched It: Russia
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission flies twin spacecraft in tandem around Earth to study key changes in the planet's waters and ice sheets. -
Aura
Latin for breeze
Who Launched It: the United States
It was part of the Earth Science Projects Division, a program dedicated to monitoring the complex interactions that affect the globe using NASA satillites. -
Hinode (Solar-B)
Who Launched It: Japan
Mission to the Sun -
Dawn
Planned to end: July 2015
Who Launched It: the United States; on Delta II
It will study the asteroid Vesta and dwarf planet Ceres; will characterize the early solar system and the processes that dominated its formation. -
Kepler
Who Launched It: the United States
The Kepler Mission, NASA Discovery mission #10, is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone → and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets. -
NuSTAR Mission
Who Launched It: the United States
It deployed the first orbiting telescopes to focus light in the high energy X-ray (6-79 keV) region of the electro-magnetic spectrum.
