List of extraterrestrial orbiters

List of extraterrestrial orbiters is a listing of spacecraft that achieved an extraterrestrial orbit.

Sun

Main article: List of artificial objects in heliocentric orbit

First artificial object on heliocentric orbit was Luna 1 (1959).

Mercury

Mission	Country/Agency	Orbital insertion	Current Status	Notes
MESSENGER	USA	18 March 2011	Deliberately crashed into surface 30 April 2015. Impact probably around 54.4° N, 149.9° W, near the crater Janáček.	First Mercury orbiter

Venus

Mission	Country/Agency	Orbital insertion	Current Status	Notes
Venera 9	USSR	22 October 1975		First Venus orbiter
Venera 10	USSR	23 October 1975
Pioneer Venus Orbiter	USA	4 December 1978	Contact lost 8 October 1992; atmospheric entry disintegration on 22 October 1992.
Venera 15	USSR	10 October 1983	Contact lost July 1984
Venera 16	USSR	11 October 1983	Contact lost July 1984
Magellan	USA	7 August 1990	Deliberately deorbited into Venus' atmosphere. Contact lost 13 October 1994.
Venus Express	ESA	11 April 2006	Mission ended December 2014
Akatsuki	Japan	7 December 2015	Active

Moon

The Apollo 17 CSM seen in lunar orbit from the ascent stage of the Lunar Module

Mission	Country/Agency	Orbital insertion	Current status	Notes
Luna 10[1]	USSR	3 April 1966	Contact lost 30 May 1966	First moon orbiter
Lunar Orbiter 1	USA	14 August 1966	Impacted lunar surface 29 October 1966	First U.S. extraterrestrial orbiter
Luna 11[2]	USSR	27 August 1966	1 October 1966
Luna 12	USSR	25 October 1966	19 January 1967
Lunar Orbiter 2	USA	Launched 6 November 1966	Impacted lunar surface 11 October 1967
Lunar Orbiter 3	USA	8 February 1967	Impacted lunar surface 9 October 1967
Lunar Orbiter 4	USA	Launched 4 May 1967	Contact lost 17 July 1967, impacted lunar surface 6 October 1967
Explorer 35	USA	Launched 19 July 1967	Deactivated 24 June 1973; impacted lunar surface in the middle to late 1970s
Lunar Orbiter 5	USA	5 August 1967	Deorbited; impacted lunar surface 31 January 1968
Luna 14	USSR	10 April 1968
Luna 19	USSR	2 October 1971	Mission terminated 20 October 1972
Explorer 49	USA	Launched 10 June 1973	Contact lost August 1977
Luna 22	USSR	2 June 1974	Mission terminated November 1975
Apollo 8	USA	Launched 21 December 1968; entered orbit after 69 hrs	Left orbit after 10 orbits; splashdown on Earth	First crewed lunar orbit
Apollo 10	USA	Launched 18 May 1969	Left orbit 26 May 1969
Apollo 11	USA	July 19, 1969	July 21, 1969; Lunar module ascent stage abandoned in orbit, impact site unknown	Human Moon landing
Apollo 12	USA	November 18, 1969	November 21, 1969	Human Moon landing
Apollo 14	USA	February 4, 1971	February 7, 1971	Human Moon landing
Apollo 15	USA	July 29, 1971	August 4, 1971	Human Moon landing
Apollo 15 subsatellite (PFS-1)	USA	August 4, 1971	January 1973
Apollo 16	USA	April 19, 1972	April 25, 1972; Lunar module ascent stage abandoned in orbit, impact site unknown	Human Moon landing
Apollo 16 subsatellite (PFS-2)	USA	April 24, 1972	May 29, 1972
Apollo 17	USA	December 11, 1972	December 14, 1972	Human Moon landing
Hiten and Hagoromo	Japan	Hiten: 15 February 1993	Hiten was deliberately deorbited and impacted the lunar surface 10 April 1993	First Japanese lunar orbiter
Clementine	USA	Launched 25 January 1994	Left lunar orbit and entered heliocentric orbit; contact lost June 1994
Lunar Prospector	USA	Launched 7 January 1998	Deliberately deorbited; impacted lunar surface 31 July 1999
SMART-1	ESA	11 November 2004	Deliberately deorbited; impacted lunar surface 3 September 2006
SELENE (Kaguya, Okina & Ouna)	Japan	3 October 2007	Deliberately deorbited; impacted lunar surface 10 June 2009
Chang'e 1	PRC	5 November 2007	Deliberately deorbited 1 March 2009; impacted the Moon's surface.	First Chinese lunar orbiter
Chang'e 2	PRC	6 October 2010	Left lunar orbit 8 June 2011; currently in deep-space orbit
Chandrayaan-1	India	8 November 2008	deliberately crashed into lunar surface.impact probe remained operational for a few days.Contact lost 29 August 2009.This mission was the one in which water molecules were traced for the first time making it historic.	First Indian lunar orbiter
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter[3]	USA	23 June 2009	Active
ARTEMIS P1	USA	2 July 2011	Active
ARTEMIS P2[4]	USA	17 July 2011	Active
Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL)	USA	31 December 2011 / 1 January 2012	Both spacecraft were deliberately deorbited and impacted on the lunar surface 17 December 2012
LADEE	USA	6 October 2013	Deliberately deorbited 18 April 2014
Chang'e 3	PRC	6 December 2013	Landed on lunar surface 14 December 2013	First Chinese lunar landing
Chang'e 5-T1	PRC	13 January 2015
Chang'e 4	PRC	12 December 2018	Landed on lunar surface 3 January 2019. The Queqiao relay satellite was placed in a Earth-moon L2 halo orbit.	First lunar far-side landing
Beresheet	Israel	4 April 2019	Crashed onto lunar surface 11 April 2019	If it were successful, I would have been the first private lunar lander.
Chandrayaan-2	India	20 August 2019	Orbiter is active. The Vikram lander lost contact 2.1km from the lunar surface, and was subsequently destroyed.[5]	It was originally thought that Vikram had survived the impact, and ISRO continued trying to contact the lander until the lunar night.[6]

Mars

See also: List of Mars orbiters

Mission	Country/Agency	Orbital insertion	Current Status	Notes
Mariner 9	USA	14 November 1971	Deactivated 27 October 1972. In derelict orbit around Mars, expected to decay no sooner than 2022.[7]	First spacecraft to orbit another planet
Mars 2 orbiter	USSR	27 November 1971 [8]	Mission terminated 22 August 1972; spacecraft in derelict orbit	First Soviet spacecraft to orbit Mars
Mars 3 orbiter	USSR	2 December 1971[8]
Mars 5 orbiter[9]	USSR	12 February 1974
Viking 1 orbiter	USA	19 June 1976	Mission terminated 17 August 1980, spacecraft in derelict high altitude orbit.
Viking 2 orbiter	USA	7 August 1976	Mission terminated 25 July 1978, spacecraft in derelict high altitude orbit.
Phobos 2[10]	USSR	29 January 1989	Contact lost 27 March 1989
Mars Global Surveyor	USA	11 September 1997	Contact lost 2 November 2006; mission officially ended January 2007
2001 Mars Odyssey	USA	24 October 2001	Active	Longest-surviving, continuously active spacecraft in orbit around another planet
Mars Express	ESA	20 December 2003	Active
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter	USA	10 March 2006	Active
MAVEN	USA	22 September 2014	Active
Mars Orbiter Mission	ISRO	24 September 2014	Active	India's first interplanetary mission
ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter	ESA	19 October 2016	Active	Carried Schiaparelli EDM lander

Minor planets and comets

Mission	Country/Agency	Object	Orbital insertion	Current Status	Notes
NEAR Shoemaker	USA	433 Eros	14 February 2000 (Valentine's Day)	Landed 12 February 2001 on the surface of Eros.	First spacecraft to orbit an asteroid
Dawn	USA	4 Vesta	16 July 2011	Left Vesta orbit 5 September 2012
Dawn	USA	Ceres	9 March 2015	Mission concluded 1 November 2018	First spacecraft to achieve orbit around two separate objects and to orbit a dwarf planet.
Rosetta	ESA	67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko	6 August 2014	On 30 September 2016, ended its mission by landing on the comet in its Ma'at region.	First spacecraft to orbit a comet. Philae lander module successfully landed on 12 November 2014
OSIRIS-REx	USA	101955 Bennu	31 December 2018	Active	Smallest body to be orbited by spacecraft and closest ever orbit[11][12]

Jupiter

Mission	Country/Agency	Orbital insertion	Current Status	Notes
Galileo	USA	8 December 1995	Intentionally deorbited and incinerated in Jupiter's atmosphere 21 September 2003	First Jupiter orbiter
Juno	USA	4 July 2016	Active

Saturn

Mission	Country/Agency	Orbital insertion	Current Status	Notes
Cassini-Huygens	USA / ESA	1 July 2004	Intentionally deorbited and incinerated in Saturn's atmosphere 15 September 2017	First Saturn orbiter

References

1. NSSDC - Luna 10
2. NSSDC - Luna 11
3. Where is LRO?
4. Hendrix, Susan. "Second ARTEMIS Spacecraft Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit". The Sun-Earth Connection: Heliophysics. NASA.
5. Chang, Kenneth (2019-12-06). "A Billion Pixels and the Search for India's Crashed Moon Lander". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-12-07.
6. Sep 9, PTI | Updated; 2019; Ist, 16:23. "Chandrayaan-2: Isro, not losing hope, continues to make all-out efforts to restore link with lander 'Vikram' | India News - Times of India". The Times of India. Retrieved 2019-09-09.CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
7. NASA - This Month in NASA History: Mariner 9 Archived 2013-05-14 at the Wayback Machine, November 29, 2011 — Vol. 4, Issue 9
8. "NASA Mars log". Archived from the original on 2014-11-13. Retrieved 2013-01-09.
9. Historic Spacecraft - Mars Probes
10. Encyclopedia Astronautica Fobos 1F Archived 2011-10-10 at the Wayback Machine
11. "NASA'S OSIRIS-REx Spacecraft Arrives at Asteroid Bennu". NASA. 2018-12-03. Retrieved 2018-12-20.
12. "NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission Breaks Another Orbit Record". NASA. 2019-06-13. Retrieved 2019-06-22.

See also

• Lunar orbit
• Circumlunar trajectory
• List of asteroids visited by spacecraft
• List of landings on extraterrestrial bodies
• List of interplanetary voyages