Unmanned Exploration Of Comets & Asteroids Options

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Trying to give an overview of missions to Asteroids & comets …

Giotto
( 2 July 1985 to comet HALLEY in 1986 and to comet Grigg-Skjellerup in 1992 )

NEAR Shoemaeker
( 17 February 1996 to asteroid 433 Eros in February 2001 )

Deep Space 1
( 15 October 1998 to comet BORELLY in September 2001 )

StarDust
( 07 February 1999 to comet WILD-2 in January 2004 )

Contour
( July 2002 to comet ENCKE … mission failure )

Deep Impact
( 12 January 2005 to comet TEMPLE-1 in July 2005 )

Which missions did I forget ?
… … …

[djellison]

'Five spacecraft were sent to examine Halley’s Comet at its return in 1985: two Japanese (Suisei and Sakigake), two Russian (Vegas 1 and 2) and one European (Giotto). Giotto was launched 2 July 1985 and actually passed through the comet’s head, within 335 miles of the velvet black nucleus, obtaining 2,112 close-range images of it, until the probe was jolted by hitting a rice-grain sized dust particle. It revealed that the nucleus was an irregular lumpy potato-shaped object, 9.3 miles in length, and had a rotation period of 53 hours, with a 7.3-day rotational period around this axis. Its temperature on the side nearest the Sun was 47°C.

http://infoman16.tripod.com/Articles/halley.htm

Doug

[Phil Stooke]

Galileo to Gaspra and Ida, NEAR to Mathilde, DS1 to Braille, Stardust to AnneFrank.

Phil

[tedstryk]

ICE to Comet Giacobini-Zinner, 1985.

[Bob Shaw]

Er... ...Hayabusa, anyone?

D'oh!

Bob Shaw

[Phil Stooke]

D'oh is right!

Could add Cassini's distant obs of Masursky as he zipped by on his way to wherever.

Phil

[Bob Shaw]

D'oh is right!

Could add Cassini's distant obs of Masursky as he zipped by on his way to wherever.

Phil

Phil:

To be honest, 'D'oh' was pretty restrained...

...how could us folks have forgotten Hayabusa?

Bob Shaw

[ljk4-1]

Does the manned mission of Challenger 2 (which looked an awful lot like Skylab) to a giant planetoid named Orpheus that was then hit by a comet in the 1979 film Meteor count?



http://www.filmsite.org/filmdisasters4.html

I suppose I could also add the Orion-type craft mission from Deep Impact, but I refuse on principle to all things decent to even mention Armageddon.

[nprev]

I don't suppose you'd care to count all the missions that at least peripherally looked at Phobos & Deimos?...

[ynyralmaen]

Trying to give an overview of missions to Asteroids & comets … 

...

Which missions did I forget ? 
… … …

Well, if you include serendipitous ion tail crossings, there's also Ulysses...

It crossed Comet Hyakutakte's tail on May 1st, 1996 (~3.9 AU downtail of the nucleus!), and Comet McNaught-Hartley's tail on October 19th and 20th, 2000.

[elakdawalla]

Here's my list (which is currently posted on the Society's website):

International Cometary Explorer (ICE) [Formerly Known as International Sun-Earth Explorer (ISEE-3)], Comet Giacobini-Zinner flyby and distant Halley observer (NASA)
Launch: August 12, 1978. Flyby: September 11, 1985

Vega 1 and Vega 2, Comet 1P/Halley flybys (Soviet Academy of Sciences)
Launch: December 15 and 21, 1984. Flyby: March 6 and 9, 1986

Sakigake, Comet 1P/Halley flyby (Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS))
Launch: January 8,1985. Flyby: March 11, 1986

Suisei, Comet 1P/Halley flyby (Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS))
Launch: March 18, 1985. Flyby: March 8, 1986

Giotto, Comets 1P/Halley and 26P/Grigg-Skjellerup flyby (ESA)
Launch: July 2, 1985. Halley flyby: March 13, 1986. Grigg-Skjellerup flyby: July 10, 1992

Galileo, Flyby of asteroids 951 Gaspra and 243 Ida; Jupiter orbiter (NASA)
Launch: October 18, 1989. Gaspra flyby: October 29, 1991. Ida/Dactyl flyby: August 28, 1993. Witnessed Shoemaker-Levy crash: July 1994

Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR), Asteroid 433 Eros orbiter (eventually used as a lander!) (NASA)
Launch: February 17, 1996. Eros arrival: February 14, 2000. Eros landing: February 12, 2001

Deep Space 1, Flybys of asteroid 9969 Braille and comet 19P/Borrelly (NASA)
Launch: October 24, 1998. Braille flyby: July 28, 1999. Borrelly flyby: September 22, 2001

Stardust, Flyby and coma sample return from comet P/Wild 2
Launch: February 7, 1999. Wild 2 flyby: January 2, 2004. Sample return: January 15, 2006

Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR), Failed multi-comet flyby (NASA)
Launch: July 3, 2002. Lost August 15, 2002

Deep Impact, Flyby and impact into comet 9P/Tempel 1
Launch: January 12, 2005. Tempel 1 impact and flyby: July 4, 2005

Hayabusa (MUSES-C), Orbiter and sample return from asteroid Itokawa (1998 SF36) (ISAS)
Launch: May 9, 2003. Itokawa arrival: September 2005

Rosetta, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko orbiter and lander (ESA)
Launch: March 2, 2004. Churyumov-Gerasimenko arrival: 2014

Dawn, Planned 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres orbiter (NASA)
Launch: planned for May 27, 2006 (suspended indefinitely)

Looks like my list is missing NEAR at Mathilde and Cassini at Masursky (and I've got to update the Hayabusa info on the page). I'll wait for this thread to develop a bit and then get to work Do you all think that the Ulysses comet tail encounters "count"?

--Emily

[ljk4-1]

Soviet scientists considered an option to send the VEGA probes to other
celestial objects after Venus and Halley in 1986. One prime target was the
near-Earth planetoid 2101 Adonis, which VEGA 2 could pass at a distance
of six million kilometers (3.6 million miles).

Sadly, the Soviets had to back out on the opportunity to become the first
nation to fly a spacecraft past a planetoid when it was discovered that there
was not enough maneuvering fuel in the probe to reach Adonis as planned.

VEGA 1 and 2 were quietly shut down in early 1987.

Information from:

Robertson, Donald F., "Venus - A Prime Soviet Objective" (Parts 1/2), SPACEFLIGHT, Volume 34, Numbers 5/6, British Interplanetary
Society (BIS), London, England, May/June 1992

Considering how relatively poor the images of Halley were from the VEGAs, I have to wonder how much could have been seen and learned if they did do that flyby of Adonis?

Is there anything of interest about Adonis that might warrant a future mission to that worldlet? Besides its being an NEO?

[SigurRosFan]

Phil, take a look at my compilation.

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=1436 - All Visited Asteroids At A Glance!

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Emily & Nico
Thanks for pointing those links out !

[ynyralmaen]

Here's my list (which is currently posted on the Society's website):

....

  Do you all think that the Ulysses comet tail encounters "count"?

--Emily

Well, they clearly weren't planned encounters, and were extremely far from the respective nuclei. However, they provided valuable information about the cometary ion composition and magnetic field structure of the distant tail. Maybe they could be added as "accidental encounter" entries, separate from the main list?

Geraint