Asteroid Probes

Asteroid Probes gathers the space probes sent to study minor planets, the category of astronomical body that excludes planets, moons and comets while still orbiting the Sun; most missions to minor planets have targeted asteroids or dwarf planets. Spacecraft visits to these bodies have mostly been flybys, ranging from dedicated missions to incidental encounters by probes already headed elsewhere. The first spacecraft to visit an asteroid was Pioneer 10, which flew past an unnamed asteroid on 2 August 1972 as a distant incidental encounter on its way to Jupiter, but the first dedicated mission was NEAR Shoemaker, launched in February 1996, which flew past the asteroid 253 Mathilde before entering orbit around 433 Eros in February 2000 and going on to become the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid. Members of this group also include sample-return missions such as Hayabusa, Hayabusa2, OSIRIS-REx and Dawn, and multi-target missions such as Lucy and Psyche.