Space Probes

Many people aren't aware of it but there is quite a number of operating space probes around the solar system. We don't yet own the place, but our remote eyes are out there... one day, I hope, we'll follow them in person.

• Most probes are tracked by the NASA Deep Space network. JPL publishes a Progress Report since 1971.

• ACE is the Advanced Composition Explorer, on a mission to determine the isotopic composition of the solar wind, interplanetary, and interstellar matter
• Cassini defied the gloomy predictions of anti-nuclear activists, and didn't render half the United States uninhabitable. Instead it's on its way towards Saturn, carrying on board the Huygens probe which will be the first ever to make a soft descent on a satellite other than our Moon.
• Chandra, NASA's orbiting X-ray telescope, is the newest great observatory.
• Deep Space 1: The Ion Drive works!
• FUSE is the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer.
• Galileo continues to circle Jupiter, providing ever more intriguing hints about an underground ocean on the moon Europa and, possibly, Callisto.
• MAP is the Microwave Anisotropy Probe
• Mars Missons: Several are under way, this is a good link for the latest news.
• Pioneer-10 is beating the odds as it not only survives after 27 years in deep space, far beyond Pluto, but is still supplying valuable data about the heliopause and the Sun's gravitational field.
• Planet-B (or Nozomi), despite being forced to fly a circuitous route towards Mars in order to save fuel, still made Japan the first nation after the US and Russia to fly an interplanetary probe.
• SOHO, the Solar and Heliocentric Observatory, almost died in the summer of 1998, but amazingly, it was revived and has been operating since with minor glitches.
• The Space Telescope Science Institute is the home of NASA's Hubble telescope.
• Stardust represents the first ever attempt to return a sample from a comet's tail.
• SWAS is the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite
• TRACE is the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer
• The Voyagers are faithfully executing their 30-year extended mission plan.
• Ulysses: Yes, it's still out there!
• WIND
• XMM-Newton is the European Space Agency's counterpart to NASA's Chandra X-ray telescope

Some Recently Decommissioned Space Probes

• The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory
• Lunar Prospector
• NEAR may have missed Eros on the first try, but made it on the second; it became the first man-made satellite to an asteroid, and completed its mission with an amazing soft landing on the asteroid's surface.

Planned Missions

• Europa Orbiter
• MESSENGER to Mercury
• The planned Pluto-Kuiper Express mission received a stop work order, but hopefully, NASA will launch a Pluto probe while the opportunity to observe Pluto during "summer" persists.