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307 records
Snapshot 2026-09-06
Active filters: ESA
Open the explorerNot carried: ESA.
Launched 2024
Active missionESA's Hera lifted off on a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on 7 October 2024. It is on course for its rendezvous with the Didymos binary asteroid system, whose smaller body is Dimorphos.
Launched 2023
Active missionESA's Euclid mission explores the composition and evolution of the dark Universe from Sun-Earth L2.
Launched 2023
Active missionESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, launched on 14 April 2023 on an Ariane 5 from Kourou and still in interplanetary cruise. Its targets are Jupiter and the ocean-bearing Galilean moons Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, due to be reached in July 2031. It has flown what ESA calls a world-first lunar-Earth gravity assist on 19-20 August 2024, passing the Moon and then Earth a day apart, and a Venus gravity assist on 31 August 2025; two further Earth gravity assists, planned for 2026 and 2029, have not happened. This atlas has no body record for Ganymede, Europa or Callisto, so those three are absent from the destinations listed here.
Launched 2021
Active missionNASA, ESA, and CSA's active Webb observatory studies every phase in the history of our Universe from Sun-Earth L2.
Launched 2020
Active missionThe active ESA-NASA Solar Orbiter uses 10 science instruments to observe the Sun, solar wind, and the Sun's polar regions.
Launched 2018
Active missionJoint ESA and JAXA mission to Mercury, launched on 20 October 2018 as a stack of ESA's Mercury Planetary Orbiter, JAXA's Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter (Mio), Mio's sunshield and interface structure, and ESA's Mercury Transfer Module. Its cruise made one Earth flyby, two Venus flybys and six Mercury flybys between April 2020 and January 2025 on solar electric propulsion, which ESA switched off for the last time on 15 June 2026. ESA's mission page, read on 2 September 2026, gave the status as in operation and en route to Mercury. Its countries are the contractor countries ESA's An international endeavour page names, plus Japan for JAXA; not an ESA member-state contribution map.
Launched 2016
Active missionThe ExoMars 2016 mission comprises two spacecraft, an orbiter and a lander, launched together in March 2016. The Trace Gas Orbiter will detect and monitor trace gases in the martian atmosphere from an approximately 400 km orbit. The lander, Schiaparelli, is an entry, descent, and landing demonstrator module designed to test out technologies necessary for future lander missions. ExoMars is a European Space Agency program undertaken in conjunction with Roscosmos. An anomaly in the navigation system caused Schiaparelli to free fall the final 3.7 km, which it could not survive. ESA's account of the May 2024 solar superstorm at Mars, fetched on 2026-09-02, describes the Trace Gas Orbiter as one of its two Mars orbiters in the present tense.
Launched 2015
Completed · SuccessESA's LISA Pathfinder tested low-frequency gravitational wave detection from a halo orbit around the first Sun-Earth Lagrange point.
Launched 2013
Completed · SuccessESA's Gaia determined the positions of nearly two billion objects to create a 3D map of the Milky Way from a Lissajous-type orbit around L2.
Launched 2009
Completed · SuccessESA's Herschel studied the cool Universe at infrared to submillimetre wavelengths from a halo orbit around Sun-Earth L2.
Launched 2009
Completed · SuccessESA's Planck analysed the Cosmic Microwave Background from a Lissajous orbit around Sun-Earth L2.
Launched 2005
Completed · SuccessA European Space Agency orbiter built on the Mars Express satellite bus to study the atmosphere and plasma environment of Venus from orbit, which ESA's mission page calls Europe's first mission to Venus. It investigated the role played by the greenhouse effect in creation of the atmosphere, the behavior and characteristics of cloud and haze formation at different altitudes, atmospheric escape and its interaction with solar winds, and the mechanism behind the super rotation in the upper atmosphere. It reached Venus on 11 April 2006 and operated in a 24 hour polar orbit until contact was lost on 28 November 2014.
Launched 2004
Completed · SuccessESA's Rosetta was the first mission to rendezvous with a comet, the first to follow one around the Sun, and the first to deploy a lander to a comet's surface. Launched 2 March 2004 on an Ariane 5 G+ from Kourou, it used three Earth gravity assists and one Mars gravity assist, flew past asteroids Steins and Lutetia, hibernated for 31 months, and arrived at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August 2014. It released the Philae lander on 12 November 2014 and ended with a controlled descent onto the comet on 30 September 2016.
Launched 2003
Completed · SuccessThe first European mission to the Moon, and a demonstration of solar-electric ion propulsion on a journey that spiralled outward from Earth orbit.
Launched 2003
Active missionMars Express is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to Mars. It consists of an orbiter, the Mars Express Orbiter, and a lander, Beagle 2. The scientific objectives of the orbiter are to obtain global high-resolution photo-geology, mineralogical mapping and mapping of the atmospheric composition, and to study the subsurface structure, the global atmospheric circulation, and the interaction between the atmosphere and the subsurface and the interplanetary medium. The orbiter fired its main engine for 37 minutes on 25 December 2003 and went into a highly elliptical capture orbit, later adjusted to a near-polar orbit with a period of 7.5 hours. Beagle 2 was released on 19 December, no signals were received following its scheduled landing, and the lander was declared lost. ESA's Mars Express page, fetched on 2026-09-02, gives the mission's status as In operation.
Launched 1997
Completed · SuccessThe joint NASA, ESA, and ASI mission placed Cassini in orbit around Saturn and delivered ESA's Huygens probe to the surface of Titan. Unable to be launched directly to Saturn with the propulsion systems available at the time, it flew what NSSDCA calls a VVEJGA (Venus-Venus-Earth-Jupiter Gravity Assist) trajectory, making two flybys of Venus, one of the Earth and one of Jupiter on the way.
Launched 1995
Active missionThe active joint ESA-NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory studies the Sun from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind from the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange point.
Launched 1990
Completed · SuccessJoint ESA-NASA mission, launched from the cargo bay of Space Shuttle Discovery and swung out of the ecliptic by a Jupiter swingby in February 1992, which investigated the solar wind and the interplanetary magnetic field as a function of solar latitude and provided the first-ever map of the heliosphere from the equator to the poles; the mission ended with the loss of contact on 30 June 2009.