Space Science Missions

We have quite a few missions, some well-known and others not so well known. Many involve cooperation with international partners or other U.S. agencies . The links below will take you directly to the mission's home page; for full names and brief descriptions of these missions, click on the column headings (i.e., Under study , In development , Operating, or Past missions ). We also have a page with some very preliminary mission concepts .

You may also be interested in a comprehensive history of Space Science from the 1940s to present, as well as an excellent reference to the various deep space spacecraft that have been launched by the U.S., Soviet Union/Russia, and other countries since the beginning of the space age.

Multi-Mission Programs

The following programs include multiple missions, many of which are linked above. You can see brief descriptions of these programs, along with links to them, here.

• Discovery Program
• Explorer Program
• International Solar-Terrestrial Physics
• Living With a Star
• Mars Exploration program at JPL
• New Frontiers
• New Millennium
• Project Prometheus / Nuclear Systems
• Scientific Balloons
• Solar-Terrestrial Probes
• Sounding Rockets

Ground-Based Astronomy

Most of our research activities are carried out using spacecraft (earth-orbiting or interplanetary) or suborbital vehicles (sounding rockets, balloons, and high-altitude aircraft). The National Science Foundation is the government agency that is responsible for most U.S. ground-based astronomical research. However, we do support a few ground-based activities, including:

• the search for planets outside of our solar system
• NASA's share of observing time on the Keck telescopes
• development (and eventual use of) the Keck Interferometer
• development (and eventual use of) an interferometer for the Large Binocular Telescope
• the Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea
• the 2 Micron All-Sky Survey
• solar observations at Mt. Wilson, including the 60-foot and 150-foot tower telescopes
• Near-Earth object detection, tracking, and characterization , including
  • the University of Arizona Spacewatch program
  • Near Earth Asteroid Tracking , a team led by JPL
  • Lowell Observatory Near-Earth Object Search

Non-Space Science missions

• Earth Science missions
• Space Shuttle, Space Station, and prior human space missions (Gemini, Apollo, etc.)