juliensimon/pds-planetary-missions

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