International Space Station program ocean was found to be possible only with Russia's assistance. At the time ISS was launched, the Russian Space Agency had experience from de-orbiting the Salyut 4, 5, 6, and 7 space stations, while NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) would not occur for another two years. NASA currently has no spacecraft capable of de-orbiting the ISS at the time of decommissioning. Skylab, the only space station built and launched entirely by the US, decayed from orbit slowly over 5 years, and no attempt was made to de-orbit the station using a deorbital
Lissajous orbit , and also the Genesis mission collecting solar particles at . On 14 May 2009, the European Space Agency (ESA) launched into space the Herschel and Planck observatories, both of which use Lissajous orbits at Sun–Earth . ESA's current Gaia mission also uses a Lissajous orbit at Sun–Earth . In 2011, NASA transferred two of its THEMIS spacecraft from Earth orbit to Lunar orbit by way of Earth-Moon and Lissajous orbits. China's lunar orbiter Chang'e 2 left lunar orbit on June 8, 2011 and was placed in a Lissajous orbit at Earth-Sun until mid-2012 prior to leaving Earth orbit entirely