NASA Science Missions

Featured Missions

Our mission milestones showcase the breadth and depth of NASA science.

All Science Missions
Artist's rendering of NASA's Europa Clipper

Europa Clipper

Launched Oct. 14, 2024, Europa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life.

More about Europa Clipper
Boxy, SmallSat in orbit over the Moon

Lunar Trailblazer

Launching in 2024, the goal of Lunar Trailblazer is to understand the form, abundance, and distribution of water on the Moon, and the lunar water cycle.

More about Lunar Trailblazer
Artist Rendering of NISAR

NISAR

Launching in 2024, NISAR will systematically map Earth and study changes to ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice in fine detail, as climate change warms the air and ocean.

More about NISAR
Featured Video

Why Does NASA Want to Explore Jupiter’s Ocean Moon?

Everywhere there’s water on Earth, there’s life. Does that hold true elsewhere in our solar system? NASA’s Europa Clipper mission will investigate Jupiter’s icy moon Europa, which — with its subsurface ocean — is one of the most promising places in our solar system to find environments capable of supporting life.

Learn More about Europa Clipper

NASA Science Fleet Chart

NASA Science missions circle the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, Mars, and many other destinations within our Solar System, including spacecraft that look out even further into our universe. The Science Fleet depicts the scope of NASA’s activity and how our missions have permeated throughout the solar system.

Download the Science Fleet Chart
An infographic displaying NASA’s Science Fleet with missions organized around their objects of study. The graphic includes both operating and future missions. A key denotes missions by color with Heliophysics missions in yellow, Earth missions in green, Astrophysics missions in blue, Planetary missions in purple, and Biological and Physical Sciences missions in orange.
Updated July 2024

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Image of a gloved hand and normal hand exchanging a colorful chip; text reads 3D tissue chips advanced biomedical research

3D Tissue Chips

Developing tissue chips that can be used for modeling of acute and/or chronic exposures for 6 months or longer 3D…

ACE

NASA’s Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) collects and analyzes particles of solar, interplanetary, interstellar, and galactic origins. The data contributes to…

A logo for NASA's ACT-America mission. It has a group of circles with icons representing the missions goals.

ACT-America

Photo of plants growing in a controlled environment

Advanced Plant Habitat

Conducting plant bioscience research aboard the International Space Station The Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) is the largest, fully automated plant…

Akatsuki

Akatsuki

Launch Date May 21, 2010 Launch Site Tanegashima Space Center, Tanegashima, Japan Destination Venus Type Orbiter Status Successful–In Progress Nation…

Artist's concept of the Aqua spacecraft above Earth.

Aqua

Earth Orbiter

ATom

This image is an animated version of the Aura satellite in orbit. The satellite, seen centered in the image, is made up of silver and gold box-like shapes and instruments. Spanning out to the right of the satellite is a long sheet of solar panels. In the background of the image at the bottom is a portion of Earth seen with clouds and a blue haze surrounding it. The top of the background is the deep black of space, with a cluster of green colored stars to the left.

Aura

Earth Orbiter

Above Earth, the International Space Station orbits. From one area toward the middle of the station, a transparent cone highlights a rainbow stripe of Earth's atmosphere.

AWE

The Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE) is attached to the exterior of the Earth-orbiting International Space Station. From its space station…

Two orbiters mated together in deep space.

BepiColombo

What is BepiColombo? BepiColombo is an international mission comprised of two spacecraft riding together to Mercury to orbit and to…

Image of the earth on the left with the sun in the far distance and the moon on the right. Overlaying text reads: Biological Experiment-01 and Studying how life responds to conditions beyond low-Earth orbit.

BioExpt-01

Biological Experiment-01 on Artemis I Studying how life responds to conditions beyond low Earth orbit BioExperiment-01 (BioExpt-01) will serve as…

NASA Image: ISS054E001485 - NASA astronaut Joe Acaba with Biological Research in Canisters - Light Emitting Diode (BRIC-LED) canisters prior to installation in the Destiny Laboratory to provide capabilities for seedling, microbial, or fungal growth investigations.

BRIC-24

a graphic of the cold atom lab

CAL

an illustration of calipso in space

CALIPSO

Earth Orbiter

Ceres

CeREs

an illustration of Chandra in space

Chandra

Space Telescope

an illustration of the Cloudsat spacecraft in orbit around Earth

Cloudsat

Earth Orbiter

Cluster-II

Cluster II was a space mission sponsored by the European Space Agency (ESA), along with NASA participation focused primarily on…

CuPID

CYGNSS

Multiple Microsatellites

Spacecraft in space.

DSCOVR

DSCOVR is a space weather station that monitors the solar wind, provides space weather alerts and images.

illustration depicting signals passing through ionosphere

E-TBEx: Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment

NASA’s Enhanced Tandem Beacon Experiment, or E-TBEx, mission explores bubbles in the electrically-charged layers of Earth’s upper atmosphere, which can…

ECOSTRESS

EMIT

Euclid

Euclid

ExoMars Program

The ExoMars Trace Gas orbiter scans methane and other trace gases in Mars' atmosphere. Schiaparelli was a lander test.

FBCE

This image shows the entire sky as seen by Fermi's Large Area Telescope

Fermi

Overview Fermi observes light with energies thousands to hundreds of billions of times greater than what our eyes can detect.…

Female astronaut next to an open circular area onboard the International Space Station with red tubes and other mechanics inside.

FLARE

Gaia spacecraft with Milky Way in background

Gaia

What is Gaia? Gaia, the Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics, is a European Space Agency astronomical observatory mission. Its goal…

GEDI

GOES-R series satellite 3d rendering front left side visible with the Earth reflected in it's solar panels.

GOES Satellite Network

The first satellite in the series, GOES-R, now known as GOES-16, was launched in 2016 and is currently operational as…

GOLD

GPM

Earth Orbiter

GRACE-FO

Illustration of Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft in space near Earth

Hayabusa2

Japan's Hayabusa 2 collected samples from asteroid Ryugu for return to Earth.

Hubble Space Telescope in space with Earth in the background.

Hubble Space Telescope

Since its 1990 launch, the Hubble Space Telescope has changed our fundamental understanding of the universe.

An illustration of a spacecraft with blue solar panels on the front and instruments sticking out explores space with Earth visible in the darkness of space..

IBEX

What is Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX)? Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) is a NASA spacecraft mapping the boundary of our solar…

An artist’s rendering of the ICESat-2 satellite with a solar panel coming off to the right and lasers beaming to the Earth which curves across the bottom of the screen.

ICESat-2

Earth Orbiter

INTEGRAL spacecraft in orbit

INTEGRAL

IXPE

Illustration of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

James Webb Space Telescope

Space Telescope

Janus artist's concept

Janus

Jason-3

Jason-CS

Artist illustration of a gold-colored satellite against a dark atmosphere

JPSS

The Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) is the nation’s advanced series of polar-orbiting environmental satellites.

Illustration of spacecraft at Jupiter with four moons visible.

JUICE

Goals JUICE (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) will explore Jupiter and three of its icy moons in depth. Launch April 14,…

This artist concept depicts the Juno spacecraft which will launch from Earth in 2011 and will arrive at Jupiter in 2016 to study the giant planet from an elliptical, polar orbit.

Juno

NASA's Juno spacecraft has explored Jupiter, its moons, and rings since 2016, gathering breakthrough science and breathtaking imagery.

LAGEOS

Illustration of the Landsat 7satellite with its solar wing extended as it scans Earth below.

Landsat 7

Landsat 8