Discovery and exploration of the Solar System Earth to be orbited by an artificial satellite ("Luna 10"), followed by Mars in 1971 ("Mariner 9"), Venus in 1975 ("Venera 9"), Jupiter in 1995 ("Galileo"), the asteroid 433 Eros in 2000 ("NEAR Shoemaker"), Saturn in 2004 ("Cassini–Huygens"), and Mercury and Vesta in 2011 ("MESSENGER" and "Dawn" respectively). "Dawn" is orbiting the asteroid–dwarf planet Ceres as of 2015. The first probe to land on another Solar System body was the Soviet "Luna 2" probe, which impacted the Moon in 1959. Since then, increasingly distant planets have been reached, with probes landing on or impacting the surfaces of Venus in 1966
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research Research offers the PhD programme "International Max-Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Solar System Science" together with the University of Göttingen. The Solar System School offers a three-year course of study emphasizing actual research. The curriculum covers the entire area of the solar system from small bodies to the planets and the Sun. The goal is a broad, interdisciplinary, and solid scientific education, extended with courses in numerical physics, space technology, project management, scientific writing, and presentation techniques. There are always about 50 graduate students studying at the Solar System School. Two thirds are from abroad from over 30 different countries.