Visiting the planets (or, wish I could do tables)

I need a "total nerd" category.  Ahem.

We've been visiting other planets for almost 50 years now!  But we've visited some much more than others.  Mostly, that's because some planets are much easier to reach than others... Mars and Venus are closer both in distance and in delta-v (basically, the energy a spacecraft needs to get there).  The outer planets are very far off; Mercury is so deep down the Sun's gravity well that it's very hard to reach.

Just for the hell of it, I did a tally.

I'm breaking these down into flybys (which just blow past a planet) and "dedicated missions" (which actually go into orbit or land).  Flybys are cheaper and easier, so there are more of them.  Note that this means some missions get counted more than once, since some spacecraft have done flybys of more than one planet.

Mercury

• Flybys - 1 (Mariner 10, 1974-5)
• Dedicated mission - 1 planned (MESSENGER, arriving 2011)

Venus: Damn, we've sent a lot of stuff to Venus.  Though it tapered off sharply after the wave of Soviet probes in the 1960s and '70s.

• Flybys - 5
• Dedicated missions -- 21, of which 16 were Soviet.  Most of the Soviet ones were pretty short-lived. The only currently active probe is the ESA's Venus Express, in orbit since 2006 and still transmitting.

Mars:  If we count successful missions (with "success" meaning at least a few seconds of data sent back) Mars is actually just behind Venus.  Of course, the successful Mars missions have tended to last a lot longer.  Since Phoenix died a few weeks ago, there are five missions currently active at Mars: three orbiters, and the Spirit and Opportunity probes rolling around on the surface.

• Flybys - 6
• Dedicated missions - 18

Jupiter:

• Flybys - 7
• Dedicated missions - 1 (Galileo, in orbit 1995-2003).  The JUNO mission is expected to launch in 2011 and arrive in 2016.

Saturn:

• Flybys - 3
• Dedicated missions -1 (Cassini, in orbit since 2004)
  

Uranus

• Flybys - 1 (Voyager 2, 1986).  No future missions currently planned.

Neptune

• Flybys - 1 (Voyager 2, 1989).  A Neptune Orbiter mission is under consideration, though it wouldn't arrive at the planet until at least the late 2020s.

Pluto

• Flybys  - 1 planned (New Horizons, arriving 2015)

What's interesting (to me, anyway) is the generational timescale.  Jupiter had one orbiter arrive in 1995; the next will come in 2016 at the earliest.  Mercury, over 30 years between visits.  (We still don't have a complete map of Mercury at a decent resolution.) Uranus and Neptune... phew.  There's a decent chance of a Neptune flyby in the 2020s (it would slilngshot past the planet to visit the Kuiper Belt), but we might none of us live to see a Uranus orbiter.

On the plus side, we'll still be getting interesting news from other planets... oh, long into my childrens' lifetimes.  There are kids in kindergarten today who are going to run planetary science missions in the 2040s.  I'm okay with that.

Comments

[Will Baird]

Sorry this is so delayed. The family is at 6 Flags atm so I thought I'd try to get some fun stuff done. Replying here is one of those. Back in the 1990s I had a list like this up on my NMSU webpage along with the stealth aircraft webpage.

Mercury:

Isn't there a planned ESA mission? Yep, BepiColombo. 2013.

"BepiColombo will consist of three modules: a European orbiter, a Japanese orbiter and a transfer module carrying the two spacecraft to Mercury. The complete unit will have a height of approximately five metres and a mass of about three tonnes, of which about 50% is propellant.

The European “Mercury Planetary Orbiter” (MPO) will be equipped with eleven scientific instruments. Flying in a polar orbit, it will study Mercury for at least a year, imaging the planet’s surface, generating height profiles, and collecting data on Mercury’s composition and atmosphere. The Japanese “Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter” (MMO) will investigate the planet’s magnetic field with its five on-board instruments. "

Venus:

I am surprised that the Russians are not interested in renewing their exploration there. They had some primo work done for the Soviet missions and they could walk away with the press way easier than shipping stuff to Mars (which is harder to do anyways). The public doesn't know that Venus is much easier to get to and can be arrived at more frequently.

IDK of any other probes planned here.

Mars:

There's a plethora of ones coming up. MSL, some of the others. Russia and China teamed for something to Phobos next year, remarkably. Mars and the Moon are the sexy hip hangouts right now.

Asteroid Belt:

tsk. Forgetting the rubble yard like that.
DAWN! It will even orbit Ceres. damned kewl that. NEAR! The Japanese probes. etc.

Comets:

A lot. The Halley's flotilla. Deep Impact. Stardust. Rosetta. Deep Impact was just plain kewl though...and was accused of being a tech demo of US military tech in space.

The outer system missions are a little depressing. The US has a monopoly and we are not cranking them out very fast at all. *sighs*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_spacecraft#List_of_space_probes

I really wish we were in a position that it made sense to have generic landers and spacecraft buses that could be tailored missions in the payload departments. However, the market is simply too erratic and infrequent for it to be worthwhile. Ah well.

[Douglas Muir]

Standards, Will -- I called the post "Visiting the /Planets/". And if I included missions not launched yet, well, where does that stop?

(Though I suppose Dawn could squeak in on the grounds that if Pluto is included, Ceres should be too -- apparently now they're both "dwarf planets". Hum.)

Doug M.

[Will Baird]

FYI

http://futureplanets.blogspot.com/