page_title: List of uncrewed NASA missions
section_title: Discovery Program (1992–present)
hierarchical_section_title: List of uncrewed NASA missions / List of missions / Discovery Program (1992–present)
context_page_description: Since 1958, NASA has overseen more than 1,000 uncrewed missions into Earth orbit or beyond. It has both launched its own missions and provided funding for private-sector missions. A number of NASA missions, including the Explorers Program, Voyager program, and New Frontiers program, are ongoing.
context_section_description: NASA's Discovery Program (as compared to New Frontiers or Flagship Programs) is a series of lower-cost, highly focused scientific space missions that are exploring the Solar System. It was founded in 1992 to implement then-NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin's vision of "faster, better, cheaper" planetary missions. Discovery missions differ from traditional NASA missions where targets and objectives are pre-specified. Instead, these cost-capped missions are proposed and led by a scientist called the Principal investigator (PI). Proposing teams may include people from industry, small businesses, government laboratories, and universities. Proposals are selected through a competitive peer review process. The Discovery missions are adding significantly to the body of knowledge about the Solar System.
  NASA also accepts proposals for competitively selected Discovery Program Missions of Opportunity. This provides opportunities to participate in non-NASA missions by providing funding for a science instrument or hardware components of a science instrument or to re-purpose an existing NASA spacecraft. 
  Missions funded by NASA through this program include Mars Pathfinder, Kepler, Stardust, Genesis and Deep Impact.
  The Mars Pathfinder (MESUR Pathfinder) was launched on December 4, 1996, just a month after the Mars Global Surveyor was launched. On board the lander, later renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station, was a small rover called Sojourner that executed many experiments on the Martian surface. It was the second project from NASA's Discovery Program. The mission was directed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, responsible for NASA's Mars Exploration Program.
  Stardust was a 300-kilogram robotic space probe launched by NASA on February 7, 1999, to study the asteroid 5535 Annefrank and collect samples from the coma of comet Wild 2. The primary mission was completed January 15, 2006, when the sample return capsule returned to Earth. Stardust intercepted comet Tempel 1 on February 15, 2011, a small Solar System body previously visited by Deep Impact on July 4, 2005. Stardust was decommissioned on March 25, 2011. It is the first sample return mission to collect cosmic dust.
  The Genesis spacecraft was a NASA sample return probe which collected a sample of solar wind and returned it to Earth for analysis. It was the first NASA sample return mission to return material since the Apollo Program, and the first to return material from beyond the orbit of the Moon. Genesis was launched on August 8, 2001, and crash-landed in Utah on September 8, 2004, after a design flaw prevented the deployment of its drogue parachute. The crash contaminated and damaged many of the sample collectors, but many of them were successfully recovered.
  Deep Impact is a NASA space probe launched on January 12, 2005. It was designed to study the composition of the interior of comet 9P/Tempel, by releasing an impactor into the comet. On July 4, 2005, the impactor successfully collided with the comet's nucleus, excavating debris from the interior of the nucleus. Photographs of the debris and impact crater showed that the comet was very porous and its outgassing was chemically diverse.
  Kepler is a space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. The spacecraft, named in honor of the 17th-century German astronomer Johannes Kepler, was launched in March 2009. Kepler's primary mission ended in May 2013 when it lost a second reaction wheel. The telescope's second mission, K2, began in May 2014. As of February 2018, Kepler has discovered more than 2000 exoplanets.
caption: Deep Impact space probe after impactor separation (artist concept)
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