Space missions to meteorites' homes
51 missions that visited asteroids, comets, the Moon and Mars, or brought pieces of them back to Earth. Together they tie the meteorites in our museums to the worlds they came from.
The mission timelineMeteorite minerals
The Moon 14
Apollo 11
The first Moon rocks, collected by the first people to walk on another world.
1969 · NASAApollo 12
A pinpoint landing beside an old robot, and the discovery of KREEP.
1970 · Soviet UnionLuna 16
The first robot to scoop up part of another world and fly it home.
1971 · NASAApollo 14
Rocks thrown out by the giant impact that made the Imbrium basin.
1971 · NASAApollo 15
The first lunar rover, a winding valley of lava, and the Genesis Rock.
1972 · NASAApollo 16
The only Apollo landing in the central highlands, and a surprise about how they formed.
1972 · NASAApollo 17
The last crewed landing, the only geologist on the Moon, and orange soil.
1972 · Soviet UnionLuna 20
A robot's sample of the bright, ancient highlands of the Moon.
1976 · Soviet UnionLuna 24
The last Moon sample for 44 years: a long core from the Sea of Crises.
2008 · Indian Space Research OrganisationChandrayaan-1
India's first Moon mission found water on the lunar surface and a new kind of lunar rock.
2009 · NASALunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and LCROSS
A Moon mapper that watches new craters form, and a rocket stage crashed to find polar ice.
2018 · China National Space AdministrationChang'e 4
The first spacecraft to land softly on the far side of the Moon.
2020 · China National Space AdministrationChang'e 5
China's first Moon samples, and the youngest lava ever brought back from the Moon.
2024 · China National Space AdministrationChang'e 6
The first samples ever brought back from the far side of the Moon.
Mars and its moons 6
Viking 1 and 2
The landers that sniffed the Martian air, and so proved that some meteorites come from Mars.
2003 · European Space AgencyMars Express
Europe's long-lived Mars orbiter, which has made the closest flybys of the moon Phobos.
2003 · NASAOpportunity
The rover that found the first meteorite ever identified on another planet.
2011 · NASACuriosity
A car-sized laboratory exploring an ancient lake bed, and finding iron meteorites on the way.
2020 · NASA (United States), with the European Space AgencyPerseverance and Mars Sample Return
A rover filling sealed tubes with Martian rock for a trip home that has yet to be arranged.
2026 · Japan Aerospace Exploration AgencyMMX (Martian Moons eXploration)
Japan's mission to bring back the first sample from a moon of Mars.
Asteroids 12
Galileo
The first close look at an asteroid, and the discovery that asteroids can have moons.
1996 · NASANEAR Shoemaker
The first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid, and the first to land on one.
2003 · Japan Aerospace Exploration AgencyHayabusa
The first asteroid sample ever returned, which proved where ordinary chondrites come from.
2007 · NASADawn
The mission that confirmed the howardites, eucrites and diogenites come from the giant asteroid Vesta.
2010 · China National Space AdministrationChang'e 2
A Moon mapper that went on to make China's first close flyby of an asteroid.
2014 · Japan Aerospace Exploration AgencyHayabusa2
Pieces of a carbon-rich asteroid that turned out to be the purest primitive rock ever studied.
2016 · NASAOSIRIS-REx
The largest asteroid sample ever returned, full of salts, water-formed minerals and life's building blocks.
2021 · NASALucy
A twelve-year tour of the Trojan asteroids, possible fossils of planet formation.
2023 · NASAPsyche
The first visit to a world rich in metal, which may be the exposed core of a shattered planet.
2025 · China National Space AdministrationTianwen-2
China's mission to sample a tiny companion of Earth that may be a piece of the Moon.
2028 · Japan Aerospace Exploration AgencyDESTINY+
A planned flyby of the rocky asteroid that feeds the Geminid meteor shower.
2028 · United Arab Emirates Space AgencyMBR Explorer
The United Arab Emirates' planned tour of the asteroid belt, ending with a landing.
Comets 11
International Cometary Explorer
The first spacecraft to meet a comet, flying through the tail of the parent of the Draconid meteors.
1984 · Soviet Union, with European partnersVega 1 and 2
Twin spacecraft that dropped balloons into Venus's clouds, then took the first pictures of a comet's nucleus.
1985 · European Space AgencyGiotto
Europe's first deep-space mission flew within 600 kilometres of Halley's Comet.
1985 · Institute of Space and Astronautical ScienceSakigake and Suisei
Japan's first interplanetary spacecraft, sent to meet Halley's Comet.
1995 · European Space Agency (ESA) and NASASOHO
A solar observatory that has become the greatest comet discoverer in history.
1998 · NASADeep Space 1
The spacecraft that proved ion engines in deep space, then flew past a comet.
1999 · NASAStardust
The first sample from a comet, and the surprise that it contained rock formed close to the Sun.
2002 · NASACONTOUR
A mission to compare comets that was lost six weeks after launch.
2004 · European Space AgencyRosetta and Philae
The first spacecraft to orbit a comet and to land on one.
2005 · NASADeep Impact
The mission that fired a copper projectile into a comet to see what lay beneath its crust.
2029 · European Space Agency (ESA), with JAXAComet Interceptor
A mission that will wait in space for a pristine comet, then split into three to meet it.
Planetary defence and sky surveys 6
NEOWISE
An infrared telescope that measured the sizes of tens of thousands of asteroids.
2021 · NASA (United States), with the Italian Space AgencyDART
The first test of moving an asteroid: a spacecraft deliberately crashed into a small moon.
2023 · NASAOSIRIS-APEX
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, sent on to meet Apophis just after its close pass of Earth in 2029.
2024 · European Space AgencyHera
Europe's detective mission to study the asteroid moon that DART struck.
2027 · NASANEO Surveyor
A planned telescope built to find most of the near-Earth asteroids large enough to devastate a region.
2028 · European Space AgencyRAMSES
A European mission planned to fly alongside Apophis as it passes close to Earth in 2029.
Dust, solar wind and the outer Solar System 2
No missions match that search.