We Are Exploring Many Worlds
While New Horizons is grabbing the headlines these days for its upcoming flyby of Pluto, there are other fascinating solar system expeditions taking place. Just to give you a quick rundown, world by world:
The Sun: Our star is a fascinating place, and there are a number of missions looking at it from space. The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE), Global Geospace Geoscience Wind satellite, Hinode, PICARD (from the French space agency, CNES), Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI), the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO), and Solar Monitoring Observatory (on the ISS).
Earth’s Moon: China’s Chang’e 3 landed a rover that can’t move but is still “live”, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is orbiting the Moon.
Mars: Not only do we still have two working rovers on the surface, Curiosity and Opportunity, but we also have the MAVEN orbiter (sampling the atmosphere and determining the climate history), the Indian Space Research Organization’s MOM orbiter, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Odyssey, and Mars Express (from the European Space Agency);
Venus: Japan’s Akatsuki will return to the planet this autumn.
Ceres: NASA’s Dawn mission is currently circling dwarf planet Ceres, mapping and studying the surface.
Comet 67P: The Rosetta mission (sent by the European Space Agency) is circling the comet as it nears the closest point to the Sun and will follow along as the comet heads back out to deep interplanetary space. Its Philae lander is on the surface, periodically in contact with the mother ship.
Saturn: the Cassini Solstice mission is at Saturn, heading into the final stages of its long-term mission to the ringed planet.
These are just the current missions. Of course, Earth is constantly studied by spacecraft missions from NASA, ESA, and other space agencies such as JAXA in Japan. It’s a planet, too, and just as important to study as any other world in the solar system.
There are many new missions coming up, more to the Moon, to Mars, and Jupiter. None for the outer solar system — yet. It’s an exciting time to be looking at worlds “first hand” through the eyes of our missions.
