Illustration Credit & License: Olaf Frohn (The Planetary Society)Explanation: What spacecraft is humanity currently using to explore our
Solar System? Presently, every
inner planet has at least
one robotic explorer, while several others are
monitoring our Sun, some are
mapping Earth’s Moon, a few are
chasing asteroids and comets, one is
orbiting Saturn, and several are even
heading out into deep space. The
above illustration gives more details, with the inner
Solar System depicted on the upper right and the outer Solar System on the lower left. Given the present
armada, our
current epoch might become known as the time when humanity first probed its own
star system. Sometimes widely separated spacecraft act together as an
InterPlanetary Network to determine the direction of distant explosions by noting when each probe detects
high energy photons. Future spacecraft milestones, as indicated along the bottom of the graphic, include
Dawn reaching
Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt, and
New Horizons reaching
Pluto, both in 2015.