Missions
Human and robotic spaceflight news from Cosmic Herald — launches, the Moon and Mars, mission milestones, and the spacecraft exploring the solar system.
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Missions
NASA's DAVINCI mission will drop a probe through Venus's atmosphere. Here's what it's looking for.
DAVINCI is a spherical probe designed to fall through Venus's corrosive atmosphere for about an hour, sampling the air at every altitude. It's looking for evidence that Venus once had oceans — and why it lost them.
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Missions
BepiColombo is about to become the first new Mercury orbiter in 50 years
ESA and JAXA's joint BepiColombo mission spent six years threading through the inner solar system. Its arrival at Mercury orbit will answer questions about the planet's magnetic field and mysterious dark surface that MESSENGER couldn't fully resolve.
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Missions
Five years of Perseverance: what the rover has actually changed about how we think about Mars
NASA's Perseverance rover has spent five years in Jezero Crater, coring ancient lake sediments and producing oxygen from thin Martian air. The science is more nuanced than the headlines suggest — and the sample cache it's building may be the most important thing it does.
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Missions
China is heading to the Moon's south pole. What Chang'e 7 is actually trying to do.
China's Chang'e 7 mission is targeting the lunar south pole — the same region NASA's Artemis program is aiming for. The mission is more than a flag plant: it's the most technically complex robotic lunar mission ever attempted.
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Missions
Europa Clipper is on its way, and its first look at an ocean world will be worth the wait
NASA's Europa Clipper is currently in cruise toward Jupiter, its nine science instruments deployed and checked out. When it arrives in 2030 and begins its 49 planned close flybys of Europa, it will deliver the most detailed look scientists have ever had at one of the solar system's most compelling targets.
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Missions
ESA's JUICE mission is on its way to Jupiter. The science starts long before arrival.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer — JUICE — is now on a seven-year trajectory to the Jovian system. Its mission is ambitious: orbit Jupiter, make close flybys of Callisto and Europa, then slip into orbit around Ganymede, the first spacecraft ever to orbit a moon other than our own.
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Missions
OSIRIS-APEX is racing toward Apophis, and 2029 is going to be extraordinary
The spacecraft formerly known as OSIRIS-REx is en route to Apophis, the asteroid that will pass closer to Earth than our own satellites in April 2029. After a successful Earth gravity assist in September 2025, OSIRIS-APEX is on track to arrive at Apophis months before the historic close approach — where it will watch how Earth's gravity reshapes the rock in real time.
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Missions
The metal world Psyche is stranger than anyone expected
NASA's Psyche spacecraft has been orbiting the asteroid 16 Psyche — once thought to be the exposed iron core of a broken planet — and the early results are upending assumptions. The asteroid may not be what planetary scientists thought at all.
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Missions
Artemis II keeps slipping. Here's what's actually holding it back.
NASA's crewed lunar flyby mission has been delayed again. The reasons are technical, financial, and organizational — and understanding them reveals how difficult it is to run a government human spaceflight program in 2026.
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Missions
Dragonfly is going to Titan. Here's why that's one of the boldest planetary missions ever designed.
NASA's Dragonfly mission will send a nuclear-powered rotorcraft to fly across the surface of Saturn's moon Titan — a world with lakes of liquid methane, organic chemistry everywhere, and possibly the ingredients for life. The mission is years away, but it's being built now.
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Missions
NASA crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid on purpose. It worked better than the models said it would.
The DART spacecraft impacted asteroid Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, reducing its orbital period by 33 minutes — far more than the minimum 73-second threshold for mission success. The result has permanently changed how planetary defense is planned.
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Missions
Solar Orbiter flew closer to the Sun than any imaging spacecraft before it. What it saw was unexpected.
ESA's Solar Orbiter has returned the closest images ever taken of the Sun, revealing thousands of tiny flares — dubbed 'campfires' — across the solar surface. It is also the first spacecraft designed to image the Sun's poles, solving a geometry problem that has frustrated solar physicists for decades.
