List of extraterrestrial orbiters

List of extraterrestrial orbiters is a listing of spacecraft that achieved an extraterrestrial orbit.

## Contents

* 1 Sun
* 2 Mercury
* 3 Venus
* 4 Moon
* 5 Mars
* 6 Jupiter
* 7 Saturn
* 8 Minor planets and comets
* 9 References
* 10 See also

## Sun[edit | edit source]

Main article: List of artificial objects in heliocentric orbit

First artificial object on heliocentric orbit was Luna 1 (1959).

## Mercury[edit | edit source]

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Orbital insertion  | Current Status  | Notes

|
|
|
|

MESSENGER |  USA  | 18 March 2011  | Deliberately crashed into surface 30 April 2015. Impact probably around 54.4° N, 149.9° W, near the crater Janáček.  | First Mercury orbiter

## Venus[edit | edit source]

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Orbital insertion  | Current Status  | Notes

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|
|
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Venera 9 |  USSR  | 22 October 1975  | Mission terminated on March 22, 1976  | First Venus orbiter
Venera 10 |  USSR  | 23 October 1975  | Contact lost sometime in June 1976  |
Pioneer Venus Orbiter |  USA  | 4 December 1978  | Contact lost 8 October 1992; Atmospheric entry disintegration on 22 October 1992.  |
Venera 15 |  USSR  | 10 October 1983  | Contact lost January 5, 1985  |
Venera 16 |  USSR  | 11 October 1983  | Contact lost June 13, 1984  |
Magellan |  USA  | 7 August 1990  | Contact lost 13 October 1994. Deliberately deorbited into Venus' atmosphere.  |
Venus Express |  ESA | 11 April 2006  | Contact lost 16 December 2014: Atmospheric entry disintegration on January 2015  |
Akatsuki |  Japan  | 7 December 2015  | Active  |

## Moon[edit | edit source]

The Apollo 17 CSM seen in lunar orbit from the ascent stage of the Lunar Module

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Orbital insertion  | Current status  | Notes

|
|
|
|

Luna 10[1] |  USSR  | 3 April 1966  | Contact lost 30 May 1966  | First extraterrestrial and Moon orbiter
Lunar Orbiter 1 |  USA  | 14 August 1966  | Impacted lunar surface 29 October 1966  | First U.S. extraterrestrial orbiter
Luna 11[2] |  USSR  | 27 August 1966  | Contact lost 1 October 1966  |
Luna 12 |  USSR  | 25 October 1966  | Contact lost 19 January 1967  |
Lunar Orbiter 2 |  USA  | Launched 6 November 1966  | Impacted lunar surface 11 October 1967  |
Lunar Orbiter 3 |  USA  | 8 February 1967  | Impacted lunar surface 9 October 1967  |
Lunar Orbiter 4 |  USA  | Launched 4 May 1967  | Contact lost 17 July 1967, impacted lunar surface 6 October 1967  |
Explorer 35 |  USA  | Launched 19 July 1967  | Deactivated 24 June 1973; impacted lunar surface in the middle to late 1970s  |
Lunar Orbiter 5 |  USA  | 5 August 1967  | Deorbited; impacted lunar surface 31 January 1968  |
Luna 14 |  USSR  | 10 April 1968  | Mission terminated 24 June 1968  |
Luna 19 |  USSR  | 2 October 1971  | Mission terminated 20 October 1972  |
Explorer 49 |  USA  | Launched 10 June 1973  | Contact lost August 1977  |
Luna 22 |  USSR  | 2 June 1974  | Mission terminated November 1975  |
Apollo 8 |  USA  | Launched 21 December 1968; entered orbit after 69 hrs  | Left orbit after 10 orbits; splashdown on Earth  | First crewed lunar orbit
Apollo 10 |  USA  | Launched 18 May 1969  | Left orbit 26 May 1969  |
Apollo 11 |  USA | July 19, 1969 | July 21, 1969; Lunar module ascent stage abandoned in orbit, impact site unknown | First human Moon landing
Apollo 12 |  USA | November 18, 1969 | November 21, 1969 | Human Moon landing
Apollo 14 |  USA | February 4, 1971 | February 7, 1971 | Human Moon landing
Apollo 15 |  USA | July 29, 1971 | August 4, 1971 | Human Moon landing
Apollo 15 subsatellite (PFS-1) |  USA | August 4, 1971 | January 1973 |
Apollo 16 |  USA | April 19, 1972 | April 25, 1972; Lunar module ascent stage abandoned in orbit, impact site unknown | Human Moon landing
Apollo 16 subsatellite (PFS-2) |  USA | April 24, 1972 | May 29, 1972 |
Apollo 17 |  USA | December 11, 1972 | December 14, 1972 | Human Moon landing
Hiten and Hagoromo |  Japan  | Hiten: 15 February 1993  | Hiten was deliberately deorbited and impacted the lunar surface 10 April 1993  | First Japanese lunar orbiter
Clementine |  USA  | Launched 25 January 1994  | Left lunar orbit and entered heliocentric orbit; contact lost June 1994  |
Lunar Prospector |  USA  | Launched 7 January 1998  | Deliberately deorbited; impacted lunar surface 31 July 1999  |
SMART-1 |  ESA | 11 November 2004  | Deliberately deorbited; impacted lunar surface 3 September 2006  |
SELENE (Kaguya, Okina and Ouna) |  Japan  | 3 October 2007  | Deliberately deorbited; impacted lunar surface 10 June 2009  |
Chang'e 1 |  China  | 5 November 2007  | Deliberately deorbited 1 March 2009; impacted the Moon's surface.  | First Chinese lunar orbiter
Chandrayaan-1 |  India  | 8 November 2008  | Deliberately crashed into lunar surface. Impact probe remained operational for a few days. Contact lost 29 August 2009.  | First Indian lunar orbiter
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter[3] |  USA  | 23 June 2009  | Active  |
Chang'e 2 |  China  | 6 October 2010  | Left lunar orbit 8 June 2011; currently in deep-space orbit  |
ARTEMIS P1 |  USA  | 2 July 2011  | Active  |
ARTEMIS P2[4] |  USA  | 17 July 2011  | Active  |
Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)  |  USA  | 31 December 2011 / 1 January 2012  | Both spacecraft were deliberately deorbited and impacted on the lunar surface 17 December 2012  |
LADEE |  USA  | 6 October 2013  | Deliberately deorbited 18 April 2014  |
Chang'e 3 |  China  | 6 December 2013  | Landed on lunar surface 14 December 2013  | First Chinese lunar landing
Chang'e 5-T1 |  China  | 13 January 2015  | Returned to Earth on 31 October 2014  |
Chang'e 4 |  China  | 12 December 2018  | Landed on lunar surface 3 January 2019. The Queqiao relay satellite was placed in an Earth-Moon L2 halo orbit.  | First lunar far-side landing
Beresheet |  Israel  | 4 April 2019  | Crashed onto lunar surface 11 April 2019  | First private lunar lander. Successfully orbited for 7 days. Soft landing failed.
Chandrayaan-2 |  India  | 20 August 2019  | Orbiter is active. The Vikram lander lost contact at 2.1 km from the lunar surface, and was subsequently destroyed.[5] | It was originally thought that Vikram had survived the impact, and ISRO continued trying to contact the lander until the lunar night.[6]
Chang'e 5 |  China  | 1 December 2020  | Orbiter is in lunar DRO orbit.  | First lunar sample return mission by China. Ascent stage deorbited on 7 December 2020. Capsule successfully returned sample via service module on 16 December 2020. The orbiter will make lunar flyby in extended mission on 9 September 2021 and is currently in Distant retrograde orbit.[7]
CAPSTONE |  USA  | 14 November 2022  | On a Near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO)  | Lunar orbiting CubeSat that will test and verify the calculated orbital stability planned for the Gateway space station.
Artemis 1 |  USA  | 25 November 2022  | Remained on a Selenocentric orbit (DRO) until 5 December 2022, then returned back to Earth  | First mission of the Artemis program.
LunaH-Map |  USA  | 25 November 2022  | On a Selenocentric orbit |
Lunar IceCube |  USA  | 25 November 2022  | On a Selenocentric orbit | Contact lost shortly after the launch. Conducted lunar flyby on 21 November 2022, likely in a heliocentric orbit.
Danuri KPLO |  USA /  South Korea  | 16 December 2022  | On a Selenocentric orbit | Lunar Orbiter by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) of South Korea. The orbiter, its science payload and ground control infrastructure are technology demonstrators. The orbiter will also be tasked with surveying lunar resources such as water ice, uranium, helium-3, silicon, and aluminium, and produce a topographic map to help select future lunar landing sites.
Hakuto-R Mission 1 |  Japan  | 21 March 2023  | Crashed onto lunar surface on 25 April 2023  | Carried the emirati Rashid and the japanese SORA-Q lunar rovers. Contact lost during landing attempt.
Chandrayaan-3 |  India  | 5 August 2023  | Active  | Propulsion module, also functioning as a Chandrayaan-3 relay satellite.
Luna 25 |  Russia  | 16 August 2023  | Crashed onto lunar surface on 19 August 2023  | Lunar south pole lander, landing scheduled for 21 August 2023. Contact lost after orbit lowering maneuver.

## Mars[edit | edit source]

See also: List of Mars orbiters

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Orbital insertion  | Current Status  | Notes

|
|
|
|

Mariner 9 |  USA  | 14 November 1971  | Deactivated 27 October 1972. In derelict orbit around Mars, expected to decay no sooner than 2022[8] | First spacecraft to orbit another planet

First Mars orbiter

Mars 2 orbiter  |  USSR  | 27 November 1971 [9] | Mission terminated 22 August 1972; spacecraft in derelict orbit  | First Soviet spacecraft to orbit Mars
Mars 3 orbiter  |  USSR  | 2 December 1971[9] | Mission terminated on August 22, 1972  |
Mars 5 orbiter[10] |  USSR  | 12 February 1974  | Contact lost on 28 February 1974 due to a loss of pressurization in the transmitter [11] |
Viking 1 orbiter  |  USA  | 19 June 1976  | Mission terminated 17 August 1980, spacecraft in derelict high altitude orbit.  |
Viking 2 orbiter  |  USA  | 7 August 1976  | Mission terminated 25 July 1978, spacecraft in derelict high altitude orbit.  |
Phobos 2[12] |  USSR  | 29 January 1989  | Contact lost 27 March 1989  |
Mars Global Surveyor |  USA  | 11 September 1997  | Contact lost 2 November 2006; In derelict orbit around Mars, expected to decay no sooner than 2047[13] |
2001 Mars Odyssey |  USA  | 24 October 2001  | Active  | Longest-surviving, continuously active spacecraft in orbit around another planet
Mars Express |  ESA | 20 December 2003  | Active  |
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter |  USA  | 10 March 2006  | Active  |
MAVEN |  USA  | 22 September 2014  | Active  |
Mars Orbiter Mission |  India  | 24 September 2014  | Active  | India's first interplanetary mission
ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter |  ESA | 19 October 2016  | Active  | Carried Schiaparelli EDM lander
Emirates Mars Mission
(Hope)  |  UAE | 9 February 2021  | Active  | United Arab Emirates's first interplanetary mission
Tianwen 1 |  China  | 10 February 2021  | Active  |

## Jupiter[edit | edit source]

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Orbital insertion  | Current Status  | Notes

|
|
|
|

Galileo |  USA  | 8 December 1995  | Intentionally deorbited and incinerated in Jupiter's atmosphere 21 September 2003  | First Jupiter orbiter
Juno |  USA  | 4 July 2016  | Active  |
JUICE |  ESA  | July 2031 (planned)  | en route  | mission to study Jupiter's three icy moons Callisto, Europa and Ganymede, eventually orbiting Ganymede as the first spacecraft to orbit a satellite of another planet.

## Saturn[edit | edit source]

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Orbital insertion  | Current Status  | Notes

|
|
|
|

Cassini-Huygens |  USA
ESA
ASI | 1 July 2004  | Intentionally deorbited and incinerated in Saturn's atmosphere 15 September 2017  | First Saturn orbiter

## Minor planets and comets[edit | edit source]

Mission  | Country/Agency  | Object  | Orbital insertion  | Current Status  | Notes

|
|
|
|
|

NEAR Shoemaker |  USA  | 433 Eros | 14 February 2000  | Landed 12 February 2001 on the surface of Eros.  | First spacecraft to orbit an asteroid
Dawn |  USA  | 4 Vesta | 16 July 2011  | Left Vesta orbit 5 September 2012  |
Dawn |  USA  | Ceres | 9 March 2015  | Mission concluded 1 November 2018. In derelict orbit around Ceres, expected to decay no sooner than 2038[14] | First spacecraft to achieve orbit around two separate objects and to orbit a dwarf planet.
Rosetta |  ESA | 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko | 6 August 2014  | On 30 September 2016, ended its mission by landing on the comet in its Ma'at region.  | First spacecraft to orbit a comet. Philae lander module successfully landed on 12 November 2014
OSIRIS-REx |  USA  | 101955 Bennu | 31 December 2018  | Collected surface sample and departed from Bennu on 20 October 2020[15] | Smallest body to be orbited by spacecraft and closest ever orbit[16][17]

## References[edit | edit source]

1. ^ NSSDC - Luna 10
2. ^ NSSDC - Luna 11
3. ^ Where is LRO?
4. ^ Hendrix, Susan (25 March 2015). "Second ARTEMIS Spacecraft Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit". The Sun-Earth Connection: Heliophysics. NASA.
5. ^ Chang, Kenneth (2019-12-06). "A Billion Pixels and the Search for India's Crashed Moon Lander". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
6. ^ "Chandrayaan-2: Isro, not losing hope, continues to make all-out efforts to restore link with lander 'Vikram'". The Times of India. September 9, 2019. Retrieved 2019-09-09.
7. ^ "China's Chang'e-5 orbiter is heading back to the moon". SpaceNews. 2021-09-06. Retrieved 2021-09-08.
8. ^ NASA - This Month in NASA History: Mariner 9 Archived 2013-05-14 at the Wayback Machine, November 29, 2011 — Vol. 4, Issue 9
9. ^ a b "NASA Mars log". Archived from the original on 2014-11-13. Retrieved 2013-01-09.
10. ^ Historic Spacecraft - Mars Probes
11. ^ "Mars 5". US National Space Science Data Centre. Retrieved 12 April 2013.
12. ^ Encyclopedia Astronautica Fobos 1F Archived 2011-10-10 at the Wayback Machine
13. ^ Dunn, Marcia (27 October 1996). "NASA Takes No Dirty Chances With Mars Rover". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 12 September 2021.
14. ^ Chang, Kenneth (November 1, 2018). "NASA's Dawn Mission to the Asteroid Belt Says Good Night - Launched in 2007, the spacecraft discovered bright spots on Ceres and forbidding terrain on Vesta". The New York Times. Retrieved November 2, 2018.
15. ^ Chang, Kenneth (20 October 2020). "Seeking Solar System's Secrets, NASA's OSIRIS-REX Mission Touches Bennu Asteroid - The spacecraft attempted to suck up rocks and dirt from the asteroid, which could aid humanity's ability to divert one that might slam into Earth". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 October 2020.
16. ^ "NASA'S OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Arrives at Asteroid Bennu". NASA. 2018-12-03. Retrieved 2018-12-20.
17. ^ "NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission Breaks Another Orbit Record". NASA. 2019-06-13. Retrieved 2019-06-22.

## See also[edit | edit source]

* Lunar orbit
* Circumlunar trajectory
* List of minor planets and comets visited by spacecraft
* List of landings on extraterrestrial bodies
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