Datasets:

juliensimon
/

pds-planetary-missions

license: cc-by-4.0
pretty_name: NASA PDS Planetary Missions Catalog
language:
  - en
description: >-
  NASA PDS planetary mission catalog — 137 missions, 115 spacecraft, and 748
  instruments with target bodies, dates, and cross-references.
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
tags:
  - space
  - nasa
  - planetary-science
  - missions
  - spacecraft
  - instruments
  - pds
  - open-data
  - tabular-data
  - parquet
size_categories:
  - n<1K
configs:
  - config_name: missions
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/missions.parquet
    default: true
  - config_name: spacecraft
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/spacecraft.parquet
  - config_name: instruments
    data_files:
      - split: train
        path: data/instruments.parquet

NASA PDS Planetary Missions Catalog

Part of the Space Probes & Mission Datasets collection on Hugging Face.

Comprehensive catalog of 137 planetary science investigations (missions), 115 instrument hosts (spacecraft), and 748 scientific instruments from the NASA Planetary Data System (PDS). Includes mission dates, target bodies, and full cross-references between missions, spacecraft, and instruments.

Dataset description

The NASA Planetary Data System is the official archive for all NASA planetary science data. Its context catalog defines every mission, spacecraft, and instrument that has contributed data to the archive. This dataset extracts those three entity types into linked tables, making it easy to explore the full landscape of planetary exploration — from Pioneer and Voyager through Perseverance and Psyche.

Each entity includes its PDS Logical Identifier (LID), which serves as a stable cross-reference key. Target bodies, instruments, and spacecraft are linked via semicolon-separated reference columns that can be split and joined across the three configs.

Configs

This dataset has three configs (tables):

`missions` (137 rows)

Planetary science investigations including orbital missions, flybys, landers, rovers, field campaigns, and observing programs.

Column	Type	Description
`lid`	string	PDS Logical Identifier (unique key)
`short_name`	string	Short machine-friendly name extracted from LID
`name`	string	Full mission/investigation name
`type`	string	Investigation type (Mission, Field Campaign, etc.)
`start_date`	datetime	Mission start date (UTC)
`stop_date`	datetime	Mission stop date (UTC)
`description`	string	Free-text description of the investigation
`target_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated target body identifiers
`instrument_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated instrument identifiers
`spacecraft_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated spacecraft identifiers
`num_targets`	int32	Number of target bodies
`num_instruments`	int32	Number of instruments
`num_spacecraft`	int32	Number of spacecraft

`spacecraft` (115 rows)

Instrument hosts: spacecraft, landers, rovers, ground stations, telescopes, and other platforms.

Column	Type	Description
`lid`	string	PDS Logical Identifier (unique key)
`short_name`	string	Short machine-friendly name extracted from LID
`name`	string	Full spacecraft/host name
`type`	string	Host type (Spacecraft, Rover, Lander, etc.)
`description`	string	Free-text description
`investigation_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated mission identifiers
`instrument_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated instrument identifiers
`target_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated target body identifiers
`num_investigations`	int32	Number of linked missions
`num_instruments`	int32	Number of instruments on this host
`num_targets`	int32	Number of target bodies

`instruments` (748 rows)

Scientific instruments across all missions and platforms.

Column	Type	Description
`lid`	string	PDS Logical Identifier (unique key)
`name`	string	Full instrument name
`type`	string	Instrument type (Imager, Spectrometer, etc.)
`host_short_name`	string	Short name of host spacecraft (from LID)
`description`	string	Free-text description
`investigation_refs`	string	Semicolon-separated mission identifiers
`num_investigations`	int32	Number of linked missions

Quick stats

137 investigations: Mission (98), Individual Investigation (19), Observing Campaign (10), Other Investigation (8), Field Campaign (2)
115 instrument hosts: Spacecraft (108), Lander (6), Rover (1)
748 instruments: null (743), Spectrometer (3), Imager (1), Radio-Radar (1)

Usage

from datasets import load_dataset

# Load all three configs
missions = load_dataset("juliensimon/pds-planetary-missions", "missions", split="train").to_pandas()
spacecraft = load_dataset("juliensimon/pds-planetary-missions", "spacecraft", split="train").to_pandas()
instruments = load_dataset("juliensimon/pds-planetary-missions", "instruments", split="train").to_pandas()

# All missions targeting Mars
mars = missions[missions["target_refs"].str.contains("mars", case=False, na=False)]
print(mars[["name", "type", "start_date"]].to_string())

# Instruments on the Cassini spacecraft
cassini_inst = instruments[instruments["host_short_name"] == "co"]
print(cassini_inst[["name", "type"]].to_string())

# Spacecraft with the most instruments
spacecraft.nlargest(10, "num_instruments")[["name", "type", "num_instruments"]]

# Cross-reference: find all instruments for a mission
mission_lid = missions.loc[missions["name"].str.contains("Galileo", case=False), "instrument_refs"].iloc[0]
if mission_lid:
    inst_lids = [f"urn:nasa:pds:context:instrument:{ref}" for ref in mission_lid.split("; ")]
    galileo_instruments = instruments[instruments["lid"].isin(inst_lids)]

Data source

NASA Planetary Data System (PDS) Search API — the official NASA archive for planetary science data. The context catalog is maintained by PDS discipline nodes and updated as new missions and instruments are registered.

Related datasets

deep-space-probes — Detailed deep space probe catalog from GCAT
cassini-saturn-observations — Cassini mission observation log
esa-mars-express-observations — ESA Mars Express observation log
nasa-eva-chronology — NASA EVA history

Pipeline

Source code: juliensimon/space-datasets

Support

If you find this dataset useful, please give it a ❤️ on the dataset page and share feedback in the Community tab! Also consider giving a ⭐️ to the space-datasets repo.

Citation

@dataset{pds_planetary_missions,
  author = {Simon, Julien},
  title = {NASA PDS Planetary Missions Catalog},
  year = {2026},
  publisher = {Hugging Face},
  url = {https://huggingface.co/datasets/juliensimon/pds-planetary-missions},
  note = {Based on NASA Planetary Data System (PDS) context catalog via the PDS Search API}
}

License

CC-BY-4.0