ESA
The European Space Agency successfully landed a space craft on a comet last month - but it's not stopping there.
In fact there are 16 mission launches planned for ESA over the next 10 years -- and that doesn't include sending Britain's first (official) astronaut to the ISS in 2015.
Among them are a mission to Jupiter , just given the green light to look for signs of aliens. And the recent project to direct a laser 36,000km around the Earth is pretty neat too.
Here are the other missions ESA has planned:
ESA's Future Exploration Missions
LISA Pathfinder (2015)(01 of14)
LISA Pathfinder will test in flight the concept of low-frequency gravitational wave detection: it will put two test masses in a near-perfect gravitational free-fall, and control and measure their motion with unprecedented accuracy. To do this it will use inertial sensors, a laser metrology system, a drag-free control system and an ultra-precise micro-propulsion system.
ADM-Aeolus (2015)(02 of14)
ADM-Aeolus is the first space mission to acquire profiles of the wind on a global scale. These near-realtime observations will improve the accuracy of numerical weather and climate prediction and advance our understanding of tropical dynamics and processes relevant to climate variability.
European Robotic Arm (2015)(03 of14)
A robotic servicing system, which will be used to assemble and service the Russian segment of the International Space Station.
SmallGEO (2015)(04 of14)
SmallGEO is a general-purpose small geostationary satellite platform that is giving European industry the opportunity to play a significant role in the commercial telecom market.
EDRS (2015)(05 of14)
A new geo-stationary system for relaying satellite data with lasers.
BepiColombo (2016)(06 of14)
One of ESA’s cornerstone missions, it will study and understand the composition, geophysics, atmosphere, magnetosphere and history of Mercury, the least explored planet in the inner Solar System.
Exomars (2016 and 2018)(07 of14)
Cheops (2017)(08 of14)
Cheops – for CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite – will target nearby, bright stars already known to have planets orbiting around them.
Solar Orbiter (2017)(09 of14)
To perform close-up, high-resolution studies of our Sun and inner heliosphere, Solar Orbiter is intended to brave the fierce heat and carry its telescopes to just one-fifth of Earth's distance from our nearest star.
James Webb Space Telescope (2018)(10 of14)
Successor to Hubble, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will help us to find out more about the origins of the Universe by observing infrared light from the first stars and galaxies and will show us in detail how stars and planets form.
Meteosat (Third Gen) (2018)(11 of14)
Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) is being created through cooperation between Eumetsat and ESA to ensure continuity of high-resolution meteorological data to beyond 2037.This next series of geostationary weather satellites will be a step change by providing significant improvements over the capabilities of the current Meteosat generation.
Euclid (2020)(12 of14)
Euclid is an ESA mission to map the geometry of the dark Universe. The mission will investigate the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.
Juice (2022)(13 of14)
To explore Jupiter and ask what are the conditions for planet formation and emergence of life?
Plato (2024)(14 of14)
To find and study a large number of extrasolar planetary systems, with emphasis on the properties of terrestrial planets in the habitable zone around solar-like stars.