List of artificial objects on extra-terrestrial surfaces
Encyclopedia
List of artificial objects on Mars

List of artificial objects on the Moon

List of artificial objects on Venus

Objects that landed substantially intact

  • On the asteroid Eros, the NEAR Shoemaker
    NEAR Shoemaker
    The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous - Shoemaker , renamed after its 1996 launch in honor of planetary scientist Eugene M. Shoemaker, was a robotic space probe designed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory for NASA to study the near-Earth asteroid Eros from close orbit over a...

     probe touched down on the surface on 12 February 2001, although it had not been specifically designed for this purpose.
  • On Titan
    Titan (moon)
    Titan , or Saturn VI, is the largest moon of Saturn, the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found....

    , a moon of Saturn
    Saturn
    Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...

    , the Huygens probe
    Huygens probe
    The Huygens probe was an atmospheric entry probe carried to Saturn's moon Titan as part of the Cassini–Huygens mission. The probe was supplied by the European Space Agency and named after the Dutch 17th century astronomer Christiaan Huygens....

     from the Cassini-Huygens
    Cassini-Huygens
    Cassini–Huygens is a joint NASA/ESA/ASI spacecraft mission studying the planet Saturn and its many natural satellites since 2004. Launched in 1997 after nearly two decades of gestation, it includes a Saturn orbiter and an atmospheric probe/lander for the moon Titan, although it has also returned...

     mission landed successfully on 14 January 2005. NASA
    NASA
    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...

     currently has plans to steer the main spacecraft into Saturn's atmosphere after its mission ends to prevent the contamination of Titan's surface by any terrestrial microbes.
  • On the asteroid 25143 Itokawa
    25143 Itokawa
    25143 Itokawa is an Apollo and Mars-crosser asteroid. It was the first asteroid to be the target of a sample return mission, the Japanese space probe Hayabusa.-Discovery and naming:...

    , a target marker from the Hayabusa
    Hayabusa
    was an unmanned spacecraft developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to return a sample of material from a small near-Earth asteroid named 25143 Itokawa to Earth for further analysis....

     probe, which has a list of 880,000 names etched on it, was released to the surface on 19 November 2005.

Objects destroyed or vaporized on impact

  • The Galileo spacecraft
    Galileo spacecraft
    Galileo was an unmanned spacecraft sent by NASA to study the planet Jupiter and its moons. Named after the astronomer and Renaissance pioneer Galileo Galilei, it was launched on October 18, 1989 by the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission...

     released a 339-kg probe into Jupiter's
    Jupiter
    Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

    atmosphere in 1995. During the parachute-assisted descent, contact with the probe was lost when it overheated. The probe melted in the following hours. The main spacecraft stayed in orbit around Jupiter until 2003 when it was deliberately sent into Jupiter's atmosphere by ground controllers as a measure to prevent contamination of the moon Europa
    Europa (moon)
    Europa Slightly smaller than Earth's Moon, Europa is primarily made of silicate rock and probably has an iron core. It has a tenuous atmosphere composed primarily of oxygen. Its surface is composed of ice and is one of the smoothest in the Solar System. This surface is striated by cracks and...

    , which may have a subterranean ocean, by any terrestrial microbes and radioactive waste. Lacking its probe's heat shield, it disintegrated upon entry in Jupiter's atmosphere in a matter of seconds.
  • A projectile released by the Deep Impact probe struck the nucleus of Comet 9P/Tempel
    9P/Tempel
    Tempel 1 , is a periodic comet discovered by Wilhelm Tempel in 1867. It currently completes an orbit of the Sun every 5.5 years. Tempel 1 was the target of the Deep Impact space mission, which photographed a deliberate high-speed impact upon the comet in 2005...

    on July 4, 2005.

Estimated total masses of objects

Surface Total estimated mass of objects (kg)
Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

 
22,628
The Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...

 
176,068
Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

 
8,403
Eros
433 Eros
433 Eros is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1898, and the first asteroid to be orbited by a probe . It is an S-type asteroid approximately 34.4×11.2×11.2 km in size, the second-largest NEA after 1036 Ganymed, and belongs to the Amor group.Eros is a Mars-crosser asteroid, the first known...

 
487
Itokawa
25143 Itokawa
25143 Itokawa is an Apollo and Mars-crosser asteroid. It was the first asteroid to be the target of a sample return mission, the Japanese space probe Hayabusa.-Discovery and naming:...

 
0.591
Jupiter
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

 
2,564
Titan
Titan (moon)
Titan , or Saturn VI, is the largest moon of Saturn, the only natural satellite known to have a dense atmosphere, and the only object other than Earth for which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found....

 
350

See also

  • Sample return mission
    Sample return mission
    A sample return mission is a spacecraft mission with the goal of returning tangible samples from an extraterrestrial location to Earth for analysis. Sample return missions may bring back merely atoms and molecules or a deposit of complex compounds such as dirt and rocks...

     and Moon rock
    Moon rock
    Moon rock describes rock that formed on the Earth's moon. The term is also loosely applied to other lunar materials collected during the course of human exploration of the Moon.The rocks collected from the Moon are measured by radiometric dating techniques...

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