The 2010s
20 missions
Mars Curiosity Rover
Landed using the sky crane maneuver, lowering on cables from a rocket platform. Nuclear-powered, sti...
SpaceX Falcon 9
The first orbital rocket to land its first stage vertically. Has launched over 300 times. Reusabilit...
Juno
Entered Jupiter orbit on July 4, 2016. Studies Jupiters atmosphere, magnetic field, and interior. Di...
OSIRIS-REx
Collected a sample from asteroid Bennu and returned it to Earth in September 2023. The sample capsul...
Hayabusa2
Japans second asteroid sample return mission. Visited Ryugu, a diamond-shaped asteroid. Fired a copp...
BepiColombo
A joint European-Japanese mission to Mercury. Uses solar electric propulsion and multiple gravity as...
Change 4
First spacecraft to land on the far side of the Moon. Used a relay satellite to communicate with Ear...
Spektr-RG
An X-ray observatory mapping the entire sky in high energy. Discovered millions of supermassive blac...
Gaia
Creating the most precise 3D map of the Milky Way. Has measured positions of nearly 2 billion stars....
TESS
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite scans the entire sky. Found over 7,000 candidate exoplanet...
Parker Solar Probe
The closest any human-made object has been to the Sun, within 6 million km. Survives temperatures ov...
Blue Origin New Shepard
Named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space. Made the first vertical landing of a rocket t...
Mars Insight
Designed to study the interior of Mars. Detected the first marsquakes. Discovered that the Martian c...
ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter
Arrived at Mars in 2016 to hunt for methane and other trace gases. Dipped into the atmosphere for ov...
GRAIL
Twin craft named Ebb and Flow mapped the lunar gravity field in fine detail. They flew in formation,...
Change 3
The first soft landing on the Moon in 37 years and the first for China, in December 2013. Deployed Y...
Akatsuki
Failed to enter Venus orbit in 2010 when its main engine died. Engineers kept it alive in solar orbi...
IKAROS
The first spacecraft propelled primarily by a solar sail in deep space. Its square sail, 14 meters o...
X-37B
A robotic mini shuttle flown in secrecy by the US military. Has completed multiple missions, one las...
Electron
A small rocket built for dedicated launches of tiny satellites. The first orbital rocket to feed its...