Originally published on The Daily Flare.
Asteroid missions have moved from flybys to sample returns and planetary defense. Here is where each major mission stands in 2026 and what comes next.
Spacecraft from four agencies are now committed to asteroids. Japan brought back grains from Ryugu. NASA lifted the largest asteroid sample ever from Bennu and deliberately crashed a probe into a moonlet to prove deflection works. Europe's Hera is on its way to examine the crater left by that impact, and 2029 will bring the most watched asteroid flyby in modern history when Apophis passes closer than geostationary satellites. The pattern is clear: sample return is proven, planetary defense is moving from theory to practice, and prospecting companies are trying to turn rock into revenue.
Milestones: the Asteroid Missions That Delivered
The first landmark was Hayabusa2. Japan's JAXA spacecraft left Tanegashima in December 2014, reached the asteroid Ryugu in June 2018, and collected two samples — including the first subsurface material ever taken from an asteroid, exposed when the probe fired an impactor into Ryugu's surface. Its capsule landed in the Woomera Prohibited Area of South Australia on 6 December 2020 with 5.4 grams of material. The mission did not end there: the still-healthy spacecraft, now operating an extended mission called Hayabusa2#, is cruising toward a rendezvous with the small fast-rotating asteroid 1998 KY26 in July 2031.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx raised the bar. After its Touch-and-Go maneuver on asteroid Bennu in October 2020, the capsule touched down in Utah in September 2023 carrying 121.6 grams of material — confirmed by NASA in February 2024 as the largest asteroid sample ever collected in space, more than twice the mission's 60-gram requirement. The spacecraft itself was renamed OSIRIS-APEx and sent on to a new target it will reach in 2029.
The boldest milestone was the Double Asteroid Redirection Test. On 26 September 2022 NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into Dimorphos, the 160-meter moon of the binary asteroid Didymos, and shortened its orbital period by 32 minutes — more than 25 times the mission's 73-second minimum success threshold. Humanity now has a demonstrated deflection technique, and both the agency and outside analysts treat the result as a proof that kinetic impactors are a workable planetary-defense tool rather than a concept.
NASA's space probes have also been busy en route to their main targets. Lucy, the 12-year mission to the Jupiter Trojans launched in October 2021, completed flybys of Dinkinesh and its tiny moon Selam in November 2023 and of Donaldjohanson in April 2025, the latter passing within about 960 km. Psyche, launched in October 2023 toward the metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche, used a Mars gravity assist in May 2026 to stay on schedule for its August 2029 arrival — and tested NASA's laser optical communications system along the way.
Together these missions turned asteroid science from reconnaissance into engineering: landing on a rubble pile, drilling it, and deliberately changing one asteroid's orbit are all now recorded achievements, not ambitions.
Asteroid Missions to Watch From 2026 Onward
The headline event of 2026 is Hera's arrival. ESA's first planetary-defense spacecraft, launched in October 2024, reaches Didymos in November 2026 and begins a six-month close investigation of DART's handiwork: mapping the crater, measuring the binary's mass and gravity field, and using its Juventas CubeSat's low-frequency radar to sound an asteroid's interior for the first time. ESA has described the mission as a crime-scene investigation of the DART impact, and the data will tell engineers exactly how much momentum a kinetic impactor really delivers — the detail that makes or breaks future deflection planning.
Planetary defense gets a permanent watchtower next. NASA's NEO Surveyor, an infrared space telescope targeting launch no earlier than September 2027, will survey from the Sun–Earth L1 point with a baseline goal of finding at least two-thirds of undiscovered near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters. It addresses the blind spot that makes small, dark asteroids the real risk: objects like the Chelyabinsk meteor are only detected when they arrive.
Lucy's main act begins in August 2027 with Eurybates, followed by Polymele, Leucus, Orus, and the Patroclus–Menoetius binary through 2033 — the first detailed survey of the Trojan swarms that hold clues to how the solar system formed from the same material as the giant planets.
China's Tianwen-2 adds an independent sample return. The CNSA probe launched in May 2025 toward Kamo'oalewa and is reported to be targeting delivery of its sample capsule to Earth in November 2027, with a design goal of at least 100 grams. CNSA has published no official timeline, so the dates should be treated as reported rather than confirmed.
Then comes 2029 — the Apophis year. On 13 April 2029 the asteroid 99942 Apophis, roughly 340 meters across, will pass about 32,000 kilometers above Earth's surface, closer than geostationary satellites and visible to the naked eye across Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia. NASA's radar campaign in 2021 ruled out any impact risk for at least a century, so the event is a scientific windfall, not a threat. Three spacecraft will watch it: OSIRIS-APEx rendezvous in June 2029 for an 18-month campaign of mapping and surface stirring; ESA's RAMSES arrives in February 2029, two months before the flyby, to record how Earth's gravity changes Apophis's orbit, spin, and shape; and JAXA's DESTINY+, launching in fiscal 2028, will fly past Apophis en route to its November 2030 encounter with 3200 Phaethon, the parent body of the Geminid meteor shower.
| Mission | Agency | Target | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hayabusa2 | JAXA | Ryugu | Sample returned Dec 2020 (5.4 g) |
| DART | NASA | Dimorphos | Impacted Sep 2022; orbit −32 min |
| OSIRIS-REx | NASA | Bennu | Sample returned Sep 2023 (121.6 g) |
| Lucy | NASA | Jupiter Trojans | Flybys 2023–2025; Trojans from Aug 2027 |
| Psyche | NASA | 16 Psyche | En route; Mars assist May 2026; arrival Aug 2029 |
| Hera | ESA | Didymos/Dimorphos | En route; arrival Nov 2026 |
| Tianwen-2 | CNSA | Kamo'oalewa | En route; sample landing Nov 2027 (reported) |
| DeepSpace-2 | AstroForge | Metallic asteroid | Planned 2026 (company claim) |
| NEO Surveyor | NASA | NEO survey | Launch NET Sep 2027 |
| RAMSES | ESA | Apophis | Launch targeted 2028; arrival Feb 2029 |
| OSIRIS-APEx | NASA | Apophis | Rendezvous Jun 2029 |
| DESTINY+ | JAXA | Apophis / Phaethon | Launch FY2028; flybys 2029 / Nov 2030 |
| Hayabusa2# | JAXA | 1998 KY26 | Arrival Jul 2031 |
The Commercial Bet on Asteroid Resources
Alongside the agencies, private capital is testing whether asteroids can become businesses. AstroForge, the only private company actively flying hardware at asteroids, is targeting two missions in 2026: DeepSpace-2, a metallic-asteroid prospecting flight due by the end of the year, and Vestri, a landing and mining-demonstration mission aimed at the same metal asteroid its Odin probe failed to image. The company says both are company plans rather than agency-verified milestones — and the track record counsels caution: AstroForge's Brokkr-1 refinery demo failed in orbit in 2023, and Odin lost contact roughly a day after its 2025 deployment.
A third company mission, Autonomy-1, is planned for early 2027 as a test of the firm's Solo AI for fully autonomous spacecraft control beyond Earth orbit — autonomy matters for prospecting because light-delay makes real-time control impossible at asteroid distances. Industry analysts put paying asteroid mining on a 20–30 year horizon, which makes these flights technology demonstrations, not the start of an industry.
Partnerships are forming at the edges. The Japanese lunar-transportation firm ispace — better known from recent commercial lunar landers efforts — has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Asteroid Mining Corporation to fly the SCAR-E hexapod robot as an asteroid-mining technology demonstration on a future lunar mission. That deal captures where the field really is: hardware sharing test opportunities, not ore.
The realistic takeaway is that agencies carry the decade's asteroid science — samples, deflections, surveys — while commercial players probe the edges of prospecting and autonomy. Watch Hera's 2026 arrival, NEO Surveyor's 2027 launch, and the Apophis campaigns of 2029: each one changes what the next set of missions will try, and whether asteroid resources ever graduate from prospecting slides to flown hardware.
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