ASI | Agenzia Spaziale Italiana

From Mercury, Mars and Jupiter to asteroids and exoplanets

The exploration of the Solar System, which started in the 60’s with the Moon race, has been targeting since the following decade the nearest and most similar planets to Earth, Venus and Mars, to progressively reach all the other bodies and extreme borders of the system. Both Italy and the ASI have been contributing in a decisive way, for at least two decades, to the most important international missions in this field.

Italian scientific instruments can be found aboard American and European probes such as Mars Express, TGO and MRO (orbiting around Mars), BepiColombo, which studies Mercury and ExoMars, which will land an automatic rover on Mars. Italy was also protagonist of the Cassini-Huygens mission (which studied the Saturn system) and the Rosetta mission (which studied the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko) and will be aboard the next European probes targeted at studying the exoplanets Cheops and Plato.

‣ All the missions

Present

LICIACube ‣

Light Italian Cubesat for Imaging of Asteroids

BEPI COLOMBO ‣

ESA mission targeted at studying Mercury. There are 4 Italian instruments on-board

MARS EXPRESS ‣

The European Space Agency orbiter, targeted at studying Mars, is equipped with different Italian instruments among which is the Marsis radar, which detected the presence of water under the surface of the Red Planet

CHEOPS ‣

CHEOPS is a European Space Agency project targeted at studying the extrasolar planets

JUNO ‣

NASA mission orbiting around Jupiter, to which Italy provided two essential instruments

MARS RECONNAISSANCE ORBITER (MRO) ‣

The NASA Orbiter for the study of Mars, with the Italian Sharad radar on-board

EXOMARS ‣

ExoMars will bring the first European vehicle to the surface of Mars

Hinode ‣

The HINODE mission was developed through a joint venture between the JAXA (Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency) and the NASA and aims at studying the characteristics of the Sun and its motions

Juice ‣

JUICE is a European Space Agency mission targeted at studying Jupiter and its icy moons: Ganymede, Europe and Callisto

Osiris-Rex ‣

It’s a NASA mission aimed at studying the asteroid Bennu

Soho ‣

SOHO is a space telescope located 1,5 million kilometers away from Earth, which continuously monitors the Sun’s turbulent activit

Solar Orbiter ‣

Solar Orbiter will allow, for the first time, to study the Sun at a distance of 0, 28 Astronomical Units and observe its polar regions from a close orbit

Stereo ‣

Scientific mission aimed at studying the Sun

Future

Plato ‣

The PLATO mission consists of a satellite equipped with 34 small telescopes, targeted at searching for extrasolar planets around bright stars

Past

DAWN ‣

Dawn was the only space vehicle to orbit around two different celestial bodies in the deep space: the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres

CASSINI ‣

The Cassini-Huygens mission, carried out in cooperation between the NASA, the ESA and the ASI, aimed at studying Saturn and its satellite and ring system

STARDUST ‣

Stardust is the fourth mission of the NASA Discovery programme, and the first mission whose only focus is on exploring a comet, Wild 2

GIOTTO ‣

GIOTTO is a European Space Agency probe, designed for the up-close exploration of the Comet Halley during its perihelium, which occurred in 1986

ROSETTA ‣

Rosetta is the main Cornerstone mission of the ESA Horizon 2000 programme to explore the celestial bodies of the Solar System. Its goal is studying the origin of comets