10 Super- conducting Super collider (£1.2 billion) construction on a particle accelerator with an 87km- circumference ring in texas was halted in 1983 – but not until after nearly half of the $4.4bn budget had been spent.
$2.5 billion
09 Curiosity rover (£1.5 billion) this car-sized robotic rover was designed to investigate whether life could ever have existed on mars. its original two-year mission was extended indefinitely at the end of 2012, and it continues to explore the Gale crater.
$2.7 billion
08 Human genome project (£1.65 billion) Work to map the entire human genome began in 1990; it had a budget of $3 billion and was expected to take 15 years – but was completed two years early and under budget.
$3.1 billion
07 Envisat (£1.9 billion) launched aboard an Ariane 5 rocket from the european space Agency’s facility in french Guiana in 2002, envisat spent 10 years in orbit monitoring signs of environmental impact and climate change on earth’s atmosphere, oceans, land and ice. Ground control lost contact with the satellite in 2012.
$3.26 billion
06 Cassini- Huygens Spacecraft (£2 billion) launched in 1997, the cassini orbiter entered saturn’s orbit in 2004, at which point the Huygens lander probe separated to investigate the ringed planet’s largest moon, titan.
$6.4 billion
05 Large Hadron collider (£3.84 billion) the 20 member states of cern (conseil européen pour la recherche nucléaire – the european council for nuclear research) picked up most of the cost of the 27km- circumference tunnel and equipment, with significant contributions coming from an additional six observer nations.
$6.65 billion
04 International Linear Collider (£4.1 billion) A planned particle accelerator even bigger than the large Hadron collider, the ilc will use a straight path rather than a circular one to measure particle collisions more accurately. sites in europe, the usA and Japan are currently being considered, with construction due to begin by 2016.
$8 billion
03 James Webb Space Telescope (£4.9 billion) scheduled to launch in 2018, this telescope – a nAsA project with input from the european and canadian space Agencies – will investigate how galaxies form by peering out to the farthest reaches of space.
$20.6 billion
02 International Thermo- Nuclear experimental reactor (£12.3 billion) in 2010 construction began in france on what will become the world’s largest tokamak fusion device – a magnetically confined core in which fuel will be heated to temperatures greater than 150,000,000°c
$150 billion
01 international Space Station (£92 billion) Weighing nearly 420 tonnes and floating 370km above the earth, the iss has been continuously occupied by astronauts from various countries since the first crew docked on 2 november 2000.
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