Every working spacecraft beyond Earth, drawn where it actually is. Voyager 1 is the furthest at 169 astronomical units — a radio message to it takes 23.5 hours each way, and the reply takes as long again.
Where
State
Who
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Positions for 29 September 2026. Distance is logarithmic — each ring is a
step of scale, not of distance. Drag to turn, pinch or scroll to zoom, and
click a body to make it the middle. Go in far enough and a planet becomes a
lit sphere turning at its real tilt. Positions, sizes and tilts are real;
the surfaces are computed rather than photographed.
Inner system
Mercury, Venus and the Sun itself.
Inner system · operating
Parker Solar Probe
Diving through the corona at nearly 700,000 km/h behind a carbon-composite shield, sampling the solar wind where it is still being born. The fastest object ever built.
Agency
NASA
Launched
12 August 2018 · 8 years ago
Now
0.35 au from the Sun, in a close solar orbit
Signal delay
3 minutes each way
Position
approximate — a close solar orbit, drawn at its mean distance
Seven years and nine gravity assists to slow down enough for Mercury, which is difficult to reach precisely because falling toward the Sun makes you faster.
Agency
ESA / JAXA
Launched
20 October 2018 · 7 years ago
Now
0.40 au from the Sun, 99% of the way there
Signal delay
3 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
Working through the rim of Jezero crater, drilling and sealing samples for a return mission that has not been funded, and carrying the first microphone to record another planet.
Fourteen years up the slopes of Mount Sharp, reading the layers as a record of when Mars had water and when it stopped. Nuclear-powered, so a global dust storm is an inconvenience rather than an ending.
The camera that can resolve a rover from orbit, and the relay that carries most of the data from everything on the surface. Twenty years in, and still the sharpest eye at Mars.
In a deliberately high, slow orbit that lets it watch the whole disc of Mars through a full day — the first mission built to study Martian weather rather than geology.
Sixteen years of mapping the Moon at metre scale, which is where every landing site since has been chosen from — including the photographs of other countries crashing.
South Korea’s first mission beyond Earth orbit, carrying a camera sensitive enough to image permanently shadowed craters by the light reflected off nearby slopes.
The spacecraft that brought back a sample of Bennu, redirected on arrival to chase Apophis — the asteroid that will pass inside the geostationary satellites in April 2029.
Agency
NASA
Launched
8 September 2016 · 10 years ago
Now
0.95 au from the Sun, 54% of the way there
Signal delay
8 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
Having delivered its Ryugu sample to the Australian desert, the spacecraft kept flying. It is now on an eleven-year cruise to a 30-metre rock spinning once every ten minutes.
Agency
JAXA
Launched
3 December 2014 · 11 years ago
Now
1.22 au from the Sun, 55% of the way there
Signal delay
10 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
Heading for an asteroid that appears to be largely metal — possibly the exposed core of a body that never finished forming — on ion engines that thrust continuously for years.
Agency
NASA
Launched
13 October 2023 · 2 years ago
Now
2.02 au from the Sun, 51% of the way there
Signal delay
17 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
A twelve-year tour of eight Trojan asteroids, the debris parked ahead of and behind Jupiter since the solar system formed. No spacecraft has visited that many separate targets.
Agency
NASA
Launched
16 October 2021 · 4 years ago
Now
4.59 au from the Sun, 86% of the way there
Signal delay
38 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
Built to fly past Europa nearly fifty times, sampling the plumes and sounding the ice for the ocean beneath. The largest spacecraft NASA has ever sent to a planet.
Agency
NASA
Launched
14 October 2024 · 1 years ago
Now
2.51 au from the Sun, 36% of the way there
Signal delay
21 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, taking eight years and four gravity assists to reach Ganymede — the first spacecraft that will orbit a moon of another planet.
Agency
ESA
Launched
14 April 2023 · 3 years ago
Now
2.77 au from the Sun, 42% of the way there
Signal delay
23 minutes each way
Position
schematic — interpolated along its transfer, not a real trajectory
In a long polar orbit that dives between Jupiter and its radiation belts every 43 days, mapping the gravity and magnetic fields and photographing the poles nobody had seen.
Past Pluto in 2015 and the Kuiper belt object Arrokoth in 2019, now measuring the dust and plasma of the outer heliosphere while looking for another target it can reach.
The first spacecraft through the asteroid belt and past Jupiter. Contact was lost in 2003; it is still out there, carrying its plaque, on a heading toward Aldebaran.
Agency
NASA
Launched
2 March 1972 · 54 years ago
Now
138.9 au from the Sun, receding on a fixed heading
The only spacecraft to have visited Uranus and Neptune, now in interstellar space and heading south out of the ecliptic — which is why only the Canberra dish can talk to it.
Agency
NASA
Launched
20 August 1977 · 49 years ago
Now
141.6 au from the Sun, receding on a fixed heading
The most distant object humans have made, past the heliopause since 2012 and still returning particle and magnetic field data on a signal that takes almost a full day to arrive.
Agency
NASA
Launched
5 September 1977 · 49 years ago
Now
169.5 au from the Sun, receding on a fixed heading
Thirty-five years in low Earth orbit, five servicing missions, and still producing science nothing else can — the ultraviolet capability has no successor even planned.
Planet positions are good to about an arcminute, and spacecraft at a planet are drawn at that planet. The interstellar probes are placed from their published distances and recession rates.
Missions in transit are the honest weak point: they are drawn at the right distance and roughly the wrong angle, and the panel says so on every one of them.