NEAR The 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 Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a period of a year. The mission succeeded in closing in with the asteroid and orbited it several times, finally terminating by touching down on the asteroid on 12 February 2001. Dawn Dawn is a NASA space probe tasked with the exploration and study of Vesta and Ceres, the two most massive objects of the asteroid belt. Launched on September 27, 2007, the probe entered orbit around Vesta on July 16, 2011. Dawn left Vesta on September 5, 2012, on a course for Ceres, which it is scheduled to reach in February 2015. Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Dawn is NASA's first purely exploratory mission to use ion propulsion. The spacecraft was constructed with some European cooperation, with components contributed by partners in Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Dawn was the first spacecraft to visit Vesta, and is scheduled to be the first to visit Ceres. If it successfully reaches Ceres, it will also be the first spacecraft to orbit two separate extraterrestrial bodies, using ion thrusters to travel between its targets. Stardust Stardust was a 300-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on February 7, 1999. Its primary mission was to collect dust samples from the coma of comet Wild 2, as well as samples of cosmic dust, and return these to Earth for analysis. It was the first sample return mission of its kind. En route to Comet Wild 2, the craft also flew by and studied the asteroid 5535 Annefrank. The primary mission was successfully completed on January 15, 2006, when the sample return capsule returned to Earth. A mission extension codenamed NExT culminated in February 2011 with Stardust intercepting comet Tempel 1, a small Solar System body previously visited by Deep Impact in 2005. Stardust ceased operations in March 2011. Deep Impact Deep Impact is a NASA space probe launched on January 12, 2005. It was designed to study the interior composition of the comet 9P/Tempel, by releasing an impactor into the comet. On July 4, 2005, the impactor successfully collided with the comet's nucleus. The impact excavated debris from the interior of the nucleus, allowing photographs of the impact crater. The photographs showed the comet to be more dusty and less icy than had been expected. The impact generated a large and bright dust cloud, which unexpectedly obscured the view of the impact crater. Upon the completion of its primary mission, proposals were made to further utilize the spacecraft. Consequently, Deep Impact flew by Earth on December 31, 2007 on its way to an extended mission, designated EPOXI, with a dual purpose to study extrasolar planets and comet Hartley 2. OSIRIS-REx NASA will launch a spacecraft to an asteroid in 2016 and use a robotic arm to pluck samples that could better explain our solar system's formation and how life began. The mission, called Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer, or OSIRIS-REx, will be the first U.S. mission to carry samples from an asteroid back to Earth. After traveling three years, OSIRIS-REx will approach the primitive, near Earth asteroid designated 1999 RQ36 in 2019. Once within three miles of the asteroid, the spacecraft will begin six months of comprehensive surface mapping. The science team then will pick a location from where the spacecraft's arm will take a sample. The spacecraft gradually will move closer to the site, and the arm will extend to collect more than two ounces of material for return to Earth in 2023.

• published: 21 Jul 2013
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