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Loading contentThe small-body missions of NASA and its centers (JPL, APL).
NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission — the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid (433 Eros) and, in an unplanned finale, the first to soft-land on one. It mapped Eros for a year before its controlled descent in 2001.
A NASA New Millennium technology-demonstration mission that validated ion propulsion and autonomous navigation, then used them to fly past asteroid 9969 Braille and, most notably, comet 19P/Borrelly — returning some of the best comet-nucleus images of its time.
NASA's comet sample-return mission — it flew through the coma of comet Wild 2, captured dust in aerogel, and parachuted the sample capsule to Earth in 2006: the first sample return from a comet, and the first return of solid material from beyond the Moon (NASA's Genesis had returned solar-wind atoms in 2004). Its extended mission (Stardust-NExT) later imaged the Deep Impact crater on Tempel 1.
A NASA Discovery mission that released a 370 kg impactor into the path of comet 9P/Tempel 1 in 2005, excavating material from below the surface while the flyby spacecraft observed the impact — the first look inside a comet.
A NASA Discovery mission and the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial bodies — it used ion propulsion to orbit the giant asteroid 4 Vesta and then the dwarf planet 1 Ceres, the two most massive bodies in the main asteroid belt.
NASA's first asteroid sample-return mission — it orbited the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroid Bennu, mapped it in detail, and used a touch-and-go manoeuvre to grab a large sample, returning 121.6 grams to Earth in 2023. The spacecraft continued on as OSIRIS-APEX to study the asteroid Apophis.
A NASA Discovery mission on a twelve-year tour of the Jupiter Trojans — ancient asteroids trapped at Jupiter's Lagrange points that are fossils of planet formation. It is the first mission to these bodies, with main-belt asteroid flybys along the way.
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test — the first full-scale planetary-defense demonstration. The spacecraft deliberately crashed into Dimorphos, the small moon of asteroid Didymos, in 2022, measurably shortening its orbit and proving that a kinetic impactor can deflect an asteroid.
A NASA Discovery mission to the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche — possibly the exposed core of a shattered protoplanet. Using solar-electric propulsion, it will orbit and map a world made largely of metal, a type never before visited.
The extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft — it flew within about 700 km of the small, hyperactive comet 103P/Hartley 2 in 2010, revealing a peanut-shaped nucleus jetting carbon-dioxide-driven plumes.
A NASA New Frontiers proposal to return a sample from comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko — the comet Rosetta explored. It was a finalist in the New Frontiers 4 competition but was not selected (Dragonfly was chosen instead).
A NASA SIMPLEx pair of small spacecraft designed to fly by binary asteroids. Built to share Psyche's launch, the twins were left without a viable trajectory when Psyche slipped by a year, and the mission was cancelled with the spacecraft put into storage.