INTERNATIONAL SPACE MISSION

1. New Horizons 14. PUNCH Mision

2. Juno 15. KEPLER Mission
3. Titan 16. Transiting Exoplanet Survey
4. CASSINI – HUYGENS (Cassini Satellite (TESS)
Orbiter and Hygens: Lander) 17. Dawn Asteroid Mission
5. NASA to Launch Dragonfly 18. NASA’S OSIRIS-REX
6. Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) 19. Voyager Mission
7. Curiosity Rover 20. ICESAT and ICESAT-2
8. ExoMars Programme 21. ARTEMIS PROGRAM – Moon
9. Messenger Mission 22. ICON MISSION
10. NASA’S ORION SPACECRAFT 23. CHANG’E MISSION
11. Maven Spacecraft 24. Hayabusa and Hayabusa-2
12. Parker Solar Probe 25. China’s Artificial Moon
13. Solar Orbiter Mission (SoLO) Project
1. New Horizons
• [Launch Date: 19 January 2006, Launch Site: Cape Canaveral]
• It is launched by NASA, being an interplanetary space probe.
• The primary objective was to make the study of Pluto and a secondary mission in fly-
by study of one or more other Kupier belt objects.
• In January 2015: It started its approach towards Pluto. In July 2015, it flew 12,500
kilometres above the surface of Pluto to make it the first spacecraft to explore the
dwarf planet.
• New Horizons was saluted for accomplishing the first direct investigation of Kupier
belt objects.
• Now, New Horizons work has been extended till 2021.

2. Juno
• [Launch Mass: 3,625 kilograms, Launch date: 5 August 2011, Lauch site: Cape
Canaveral]
• It is a space probe launched by NASA and orbiting around the planet Jupiter.

Objectives of Juno

• Measurement of the composition, gravity, magnetic field and polar magnetosphere

of Jupiter.
• The spacecraft will also search for clues about the formation of the planet, inclusive
of having a rocky core, the amount of water it contains within the deep
atmosphere, mass distribution and its deep winds reaching the speeds of 618
kilometres per hour. It provides light on Earth origin.
• It is the second spacecraft after the nuclear powered Galileo Orbiter (1995–2003) to
orbit Jupiter.
• Achievements Juno is the first Jupiter’s mission making the usage of solar panels in
place of the radio isotope based thermoelectric generators.

3. Titan
[Proposed launch date: between 2020 and 2029, Launch mass: 1613 kilograms]

This is a Saturn exploration mission proposed for the future. The mission has been
proposed to study Saturn and its Moon—Titan and Enceladus.

The Titan Saturn system mission (TSSM) was officially decided in January 2009 by the
merging of ESA’s Titan and Enceladus Mission with NASA’s Titan Explorer study.

The TSSM mission consists of an orbiter and two titan exploration probes: a ‘hot air
balloon’ that will float in Titan’s clouds and a ‘lander’ that will splash down on one of
its methane seas.

Objectives of TSSM

• It will try to identify the reason behind Titan’s origin and its evolution models.
• Recover information on Enceladus and Saturn’s magnetosphere.

4. CASSINI – HUYGENS (Cassini Orbiter and Hygens: Lander)

[Launch mass: 5,712 kilograms, Launch date: 15 October 1997, Launch site: Cape
Canaveral]

Cassini: Huygens is an unmanned spacecraft sent to the planet Saturn.

It is the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter orbit.

• Team: Sixteen European countries and the US are responsible for designing, building,
flying and collecting data from Cassini Orbiter.

• It completely destroyed on 15 September 2017.

Achievements
 • The first mission to successfully complete in various observations: depth, up-close
study of Saturn and its realm from orbit.
• Titan was revealed to have Earth like conditions: rain, rivers, lakes and sea.
• Among the most surprising discoveries were geysers erupting on Enceladus.
• First complete view of the North polar hexagon and discovery of giant hurricanes
at both of the Saturn’s poles.

5. NASA to Launch Dragonfly

NASA plans to launch an unmanned nuclear-powered drone, Dragonfly as early as 2026

to search for life on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.

Why study of Titan?

• Titan is an analog to the very early Earth, and can provide clues to how life
may have arisen on our planet.
• Titan is larger than the planet Mercury and is the second largest moon in our
solar system.

6. Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)

[Launch mass: 3.839 kilograms, Launch date: 26 November 2011, Launch site: Cape
Canaveral]

MSL is a robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA, which successfully
landed ‘Curiosity,’ a Mars rover, in Gale Crater on 6 August 2012.

‘Curiosity’ is about twice as long and five times as heavy as the previous Mars rovers
‘Spirit’ and ‘Opportunity’ and carries over ten times the mass of scientific instruments.
Scientific goals of MSL

1. Determining the landing sites and its habitability, including the role of water.
2. The study of the climate and the geology of Mars.
3. All of these are important for preparing a future manned mission to mars.

Objectives

• Study of organic carbon compounds, building blocks of life, identify biosignature.

• Investigate chemical and minerology of Martian surface.

• Assess Maritan atmosphere, determine present state, distribution and cycling of water
and CO2.

• Characterise the surface radiation.

7. Curiosity Rover

[Launch mass: Rover only of 899 kilograms, Launch date: 26 November 2011]

Curiosity is a car-sized robotic rover exploring Gale Cater on Mars as a part of NASA’s
Mars Science Laboratory mission.

Since landing on 6 August 2012, it is still working.

In December 2012, Curiosity’s mission was extended to an indefenite period. The goals
and objectives remain same as those of Mars Science Laboratory.
 8. ExoMars Programme

It is a joint endeavour between ESA and the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. The
primary goal of the ExoMars programme is to address the question of whether life has
ever existed on Mars.

The programme comprises two missions.

• The first launched in March 2016 and consists of the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) and
Schiaparelli, an entry, descent and landing demonstrator module. TGO’s main
objectives are to search for evidence of methane and other trace atmospheric gases
that could be signatures of active biological or geological processes. The Schiaparelli
probe crashed during its attempt to land on Mars.

• The second, comprising a rover (ExoMars Rover) and surface platform, is planned
for 2022. Together they will address the question of whether life has ever existed on
Mars.

9. Messenger Mission

MESSENGER was a NASA robotic spacecraft that orbited the planet Mercury between
2011 and 2015. The spacecraft was launched aboard a Delta II rocket in August 2004 to
study Mercury’s chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. MESSENGER
entered orbit around Mercury on 18 March 2011, becoming the first spacecraft to do so.

The MESSENGER mission was planned to study Mercury’s features and environment
from orbit.

Particularly, the mission’s scientific objectives were:

• Characterising the planet surface’s chemical composition.
• Studying the geologic history of planet.
• Elucidating the global magnetic field nature (magnetosphere).
• Determining the core’s size and state.
• Determining the poles’ volatile inventory.
• Studying the planet’s exosphere nature.

10. NASA’S ORION SPACECRAFT

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is designed to carry humans further than they’ve ever gone
before.

Orion will function as the exploration vehicle which will take the crew to space, provide
capability for emergency abort, sustain the crew at the time of travelling to space, and
provide safer re-entry from deep space return velocities. Orion will be launched from
NASA’s new heavy-lift rocket, the System for Space Launch.

NASA has successfully finished the last test for qualifying Orion’s space capsule’s
parachute system for onboard flights with astronauts, ahead of its mission in sending
humans to the Moon and beyond.

The parachute system is the lone system that must assemble itself in mid-air and must
be able to keep the crew safer in scenarios of numerous failures, for instance mortar
failures which avoid deploying a single parachute type, or circumstances causing the
failure of some of the components of parachute textile.

11. Maven Spacecraft

The MAVEN mission was launched on November 18, 2013, and went into orbit around
Mars on September 21, 2014.

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission was devised by NASA for
studying the Martian atmosphere during the Mars orbiting.

MAVEN was launched aboard through an Atlas V launch vehicle.

Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) finished its chief mission in the
November 2015 and since that time, has been functioning in an extended mission,
continuing the Mars’ upper atmosphere investigation and exploring further
opportunities for science that the new relay orbit will bring. It also discovered two new
types of Martian auroras — diffuse aurora and proton aurora.

MAVEN has demonstrated that the majority of the carbon dioxide (CO2) on the planet
has been lost to space.

12. Parker Solar Probe

NASA’s historic Parker solar probe launched on 12 August 2018 from the Cape
Canaveral.

It is a small car sized spacecraft, will travel at a distance of 4 millions miles from the
Earth surface. It will be first ever mission to touch the Sun.

About the mission

Parker Solar Probe will travel closer to the Sun’s surface than any other spacecraft had
done before, through the Sun’s atmosphere, facing vicious conditions of heat and
radiation and eventually providing humankind with the closest-ever star observations.
The corona is hotter than the Sun’s surface and also give rise to the solar wind which
being charged particles has a continuous flow that infuses the solar system.

Capricious solar winds cause turbulence in Earth’s magnetic field and can play havoc
with Earth’s communications technology.

NASA anticipates the results will facilitate scientists for forecasting changes in Earth’s
space environment.

Parker Solar Probe

On 12 August 2019, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed a year in service.

It is part of NASA’s “Living With a Star” programme that explores different aspects of
the Sun-Earth system. The probe seeks to gather information about the Sun’s
atmosphere and NASA says that it “will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun”. It
is also the closest a human-made object has ever gone to the Sun.

13. Solar Orbiter Mission (SoLO)

Solar Orbiter (SoLO) mission was launched on 10 February 2020 with 7 years lifespan.
The mission is a collaboration between ESA (the European Space Agency) and NASA.

The spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V
rocket.

About Solar Orbiter:

• Solar Orbiter is a mission dedicated to solar and heliospheric physics.

 • This is the first mission that will provide images of the sun's north and south
poles using a suite of six instruments on board that will capture the spacecraft's
view.
• It is a seven-year mission and will come within 26 million miles of the sun. It will
be able to brave the heat of the sun because it has a custom titanium heat shield
coated in calcium phosphate so that it can endure temperatures up to 970
degrees Fahrenheit.
• What drives the solar wind and where does the coronal magnetic field originate
from?

14. PUNCH Mision

(Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) NASA has selected Texas-based
Southwest Research Institute to lead its PUNCH mission which will image the Sun.

This is a landmark mission that will image regions beyond the Sun’s outer corona.

Dipankar Banerjee, solar physicist from Indian Institute of Astrophysics is also a Co-
Investigator of the PUNCH mission.

It is focused on understanding the transition of particles from the Sun’s outer corona
to the solar wind that fills interplanetary space. It will consist of a constellation of four
microsatellites that through continuous 3D deep-field imaging, will observe the corona
and heliosphere as elements of a single, connected system. The mission is expected to
be launched in 2022.

15. KEPLER Mission

The Kepler space telescope fuel got exhausted and will be retired after a 9-1/2-year
mission. Presently orbiting the Sun, nearly 156 million km from the Earth, the spacecraft
will drift from our planet further when its radio transmitters will be turned off by
mission engineers.

About Kepler Mission

• Launched in the year 2009, for surveying the Milky Way galaxy region so as to
discover hundreds of Earth-size and smaller planets in or around the habitable zone
and determining in our galaxy ,the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars that might
have such planets.

• As on March 2018, 2,342 planets had been found confirmed by the Kepler; added
potential planets, and its finding of exo-worlds stands at 4,587.

Habitable zone: If a planet is too closer to the star it orbits, any water on the surface
rapidly boils off, producing a steam atmosphere. If the planet is too distant from the
star, any water on the surface freezes. The habitable zone (or “Goldilocks zone”) is the
range of orbital distances from a star at which liquid water can exist on the planet
surface. This distance range changes depending on the star size and temperature. Earth
is in the Sun habitable zone, being one of the reasons our planet has liquid water like
oceans and lakes.

16. Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a NASA mission that will look for
planets orbiting the brightest stars in Earth’s sky. It was led by the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology with seed funding from Google. The mission will monitor at
least 200,000 stars for signs of exoplanets, ranging from Earth-sized rocky worlds to
huge gas giant planets. TESS, however, will focus on stars that are 30 to 100 times
brighter than those Kepler examined.

This will help astronomers better understand the structure of solar systems outside of
our Earth, and provide insights into how our own solar system formed.

17. Dawn Asteroid Mission

Since its launch in the year 2007, the unmanned spacecraft has travelled 4.3 billion
miles (6.9 billion kilometers).

The only spacecraft ever to orbit a cosmic body in 2011, in the main asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter when it started orbiting around the asteroid Vesta.

Dawn, after running out of fuel in 2018 , being the only NASA spacecraft launched 11
years ago ,that studied two of the largest objects in the asteroid belt, has ended its
mission.

18. NASA’S OSIRIS-REX

The NASA OSIRIS-REx mission launch took place on September 8, 2016. Since then, the
spacecraft is travelling for two years through space for reaching its target, primitive
asteroid Bennu, in October, 2018.

NASA’s OSIRIS-REX spacecraft has discovered hydrogen and oxygen molecules traces,
which being part of the water formula and thus the potential for life.

It entrenched in the asteroid Bennu’s rocky surface, where it will grab a sample of rock
and dust and bring it back to the Earth.
 19. Voyager Mission

The NASA’s Voyager mission was launched in the 1970’s, to explore the outer planets.

This probe is still going in interstellar space.

• The Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) mission goal is to expand the NASA solar
system exploration ahead of the outer planets neighborhood to the outer limits of the
Sun’s sphere of influence, and possibly away from it.

20. ICESAT and ICESAT-2

ICESat (Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite) mission send for measuring ice sheet
mass balance, cloud and aerosol heights, land topography and vegetation
characteristics as a Earth Observing System.

The Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) is the 2nd-generation of the laser
altimeter ICESat-1 mission (January 13, 2003 to August 14, 2010).

ICESAT 2 was launched in 5 September 2018 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California, into a near-circular, near-polar orbit with an altitude of approximately 496
km.

It was designed to operate for three years and carry enough propellant for seven years.

• NASA’s ICESat-2 will map ice sheets melting in Antarctica and the resulting rising sea
level across the globe, thereby assisting in the improvement of climate forecasts.
• The satellite is measuring the sea ice height to inside an inch, tracing the unmapped
Antarctic valleys terrain , surveying of remote ice sheets, and peering through forest
canopies and shallow coastal waters.

21. ARTEMIS PROGRAM - Moon

Artemis- Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of Moon’s

Interaction with the Sun. It is NASA’s next mission to the Moon.

With the Artemis program, NASA will land the first woman and next man on the Moon
by 2024. Artemis was the twin sister of Apollo and goddess of the Moon in Greek
mythology.

Objective

To measure what happens when the Sun’s radiation hits our rocky moon, where there is
no magnetic field to protect it.

22. ICON MISSION

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has launched a satellite ICON
to detect dynamic zones of Earth’s Ionosphere. The satellite Ionosphere Connection
Explorer (ICON) was launched from an aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean near the Florida
coast on 11 October 2019 with two years lifespan. The ICON satellite will study the
Earth’s Ionosphere. It includes various layers of the uppermost atmosphere where free
electrons flow free electrons flow freely.
 23. CHANG’E MISSION

The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program is designed to be conducted in four phases.

The first is simply reaching lunar orbit, a task completed by Chang'e 1 in 2007 and
Chang'e 2 in 2010. The second is landing and roving on the Moon, as Chang'e 3 did in
2013 and Chang'e 4 did in 2019.

The third is collecting lunar samples from the near-side and sending them to Earth, a
task for the future Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6 missions.

The fourth phase consists of development of a robotic research station near the
Moon's south pole.

Chang’e-4 mission

Chang’e-4 mission achieved humanity's first soft landing on the far side of the Moon,
on 3 January 2019.This mission will attempt to determine the age and composition of
an unexplored region of the Moon, as well as develop technologies required for the
later stages of the program.

Objectives

An ancient collision event on the Moon left behind a very large crater, called the Aitken
Basin, that is now about 13 km (8.1 mi) deep, and it is thought that the massive
impactor likely exposed the deep lunar crust, and probably the mantle materials. If
Chang'e 4 can find and study some of this material, it would get an unprecedented view
into the Moon's internal structure and origins.
China has launched Chang’e-4, a first probe ever to explore the dark side of the Moon,
marking another milestone in its ambitious space programme.

• The Moon is tidally locked to Earth, rotating at the same rate at which it orbits our
planet, so the remote side is never visible from Earth. The probe, the Chang’e-4, is
projected to make the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the Moon. Previous
spacecraft have seen the Moon’s far side, but none has landed on it.

• The Moon’s far side termed as ‘South Pole Aitken Basin’ still remains a mystery
among space scientists and by sending a probe there, China will outshine the US and
USSR historical achievements .

• Chang’e 4 is the country’s fourth mission in the series of lunar mission which is being
named after the Chinese Moon goddess.

• The main problem faced by the Chinese team will be difficulties in communication
as they attempt to land on the Moon’s other side. China is anticipated for
consideration of using options such as radio telescopes for communicating in the
absence of a transmitting medium.

YUTU 2
China has named the lunar rover, successfully deployed to carry out a string of
experiments on the far side of the Moon, as ‘Yutu-2’. The rover’s touchdown is part of
China Chang’e-4 lunar probe.
Key facts
• The rover has been programmed to launch ground penetration radar that would
help map the Moon’s inner structures.
• It would also analyse soil and rock samples for minerals, apart from activating a
radio telescope to search for possible signals from deep space.

24. Hayabusa and Hayabusa-2

Hayabusa is an asteroid sample-return mission operated by the Japanese Space

Exploration Agency (JAXA).

In mid-September 2005, Hayabusa landed on the asteroid Itokawa, and managed to

collect samples in the form of grains of asteroidal material. It returned to Earth with the
samples in June 2010, thereby becoming the first spacecraft to return asteroid
samples to Earth for analysis.

HAYABUSA-2

• It was launched on 3 December 2014 and rendezvoused with near-Earth asteroid

Ryugu on 27 June 2018 at 300 million km from Earth's surface.

• It is in the progression of asteroid surveying for a year and a half, leaving in

December 2019, and returning to Earth in December 2020.

• Hayabusa-2 took numerous science payloads for remote sensing, sampling, and four
small rovers which will examine the asteroid surface so as to update the
environmental and geological context of the samples collected.

25. China’s Artificial Moon Project

China is in the process of creating an “artificial moon” that would be bright enough to
replace the streetlights in the south-western city of Chengdu by 2020.
• Chinese scientists intend for sending three artificial Moons to space in the coming
four years, where reflective material such as a mirror is estimated to orbit at 500
kilometres above the Earth and light up an area with a diameter of 10 to 80
kilometres.

• There will be a reflective coating on a artificial Moon which can deflect sunlight back
to Earth, akin to how the moon shines.

• The enlightened satellite is said to be eight times brighter than the real Moon.

• The three artificial moons would function alternately for significantly reducing
infrastructural electricity consumption, especially at the time of winter. The illuminated
satellite is intended to complement the moon at night.

• Every year, light from the artificial moon in Chengdu covering 50 square
kilometres could possibly save about 1.2 billion yuan ($240 million) in electricity costs.

• It could also be used to lighten up the areas experiencing power breakdown due
to natural disasters such as earthquakes.

Note: The thought for the artificial human made moon began from a French artist who
imagined hanging a necklace in the sky made of mirrors for lightening up the Paris
streets at night. Russia tried to initiate a 25-metre “space mirror” but the project was
suspended in the year 1999.