Completed missions: NEAR Shoemaker, a mission to survey asteroids, succeeded in its goals & is today defunct, with with success landed in 433 Eros. Mars Pathfinder, a Mars lander with the miniature rover, completed its mission & is at present defunct. Lunar Prospector, a Moon orbiter, achieved its objectives and was deliberately crashed onto a Moon's surface. Deep Impact, the mission where the space vehicle was deliberately impacted into a comet, still has the functional flyby craft which can be utilized for a long mission.

Partly successful missions: Genesis, a mission to collect solar wind particles, successfully did soh, however a go to capsule's chute failed to deploy & a capsule crashed into a Utah desert; preliminary reports indicate that a few of a samples survived the impact & that much of scientific information will however exist as learned from either the children.

Failing missions: CONTOUR, a mission to visit many comets, exploded shortly after its launch.

Missions inside progress: Stardust, the mission to the collect samples from either a comet's tail, has with success gathered its samples, & get on its way to Globe to link to the babies. MESSENGER, a mission to Mercury, was launched in August, 2004, and get on its way to the planet vithe a circuitous route. ASPERA-3 is a 'Discovery Mission of Opportunity' (a NASA-designed instrument in board a second space professional's ballistic capsule). These are designed to learn a interaction between a solar wind and the atmosphere of Mars, and get on board a European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter.

Forthcoming missions: Dawn, to be launched inside 2006, is a mission to survey a big asteroids Ceres and Vesta. A Kepler Space Observatory, scheduled for launch in 2007, will utilize the unique spaceborne scope specifically designed to research for Globe-prefer planets in stars beyond my solar technique. The Moon Mineralogy Mapper ([http://aviris.jpl.nasa.gov/html/m3.html M3]) is a 'Discovery Mission of Opportunity' (the NASA-designed instrument in board a second space professional's ballistic capsule). These are designed to choose a moon's mineral composition at high guide, & get on board a ISRO's Chandrayan orbiter.

Forthcoming Discovery highlights

January 15, 2006 : Stardust returns samples to Earth June, 2006 : Launch of Dawn mission October, 2006 : MESSENGER's number one flyby of Venus June, 2007 : MESSENGER's 2nd flyby of Venus