Asteroid ExplorationThe exploration and study of asteroids has been undertaken in several ways. First and foremost, conventional astronomical observation with optical telescopes is used to continue the search for new asteroids in the solar system. Radar imaging allows us to construct digital models of the asteroids we have found. Lastly, we have sent several spacecraft on missions to asteroids, to collect increasingly detailed photographs of their surface. Some of these missions are detailed below.
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Galileo
The Galileo space probe was launched in 1989, and in the course of it's spiraling path throughout our Solar system, it made flybys of the asteroids Gaspra and Ida, collecting images of them and Ida's moon, Dactyl. |
Hayabusa
The Hayabusa mission was launched by the Japanese space agency in 2003, and successfully made contact with the asteroid Itokawa in 2005, despite numerous difficulties in the course of its mission. It is currently on its return trip to Earth, with an expected rendezvous in 2010, for delivery of a capsule that hopefully contains a sample of the asteroid. This was the first spacecraft to deliberately make physical contact with an asteroid and successfully take off again. |
Dawn
The Dawn space probe was launched in September 2007, and it's mission is to rendezvous with, orbit, and scan the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, with a mission end date of July 2015. At the time of this writing, the Dawn probe is in transit to the Mars vicinity for a gravity assist maneuver en route to Vesta. |
