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Astro - E2

Observing the X-ray spectrum of the distant universe, Astro-E2 will open a new window into the workings of black holes, neutron stars, active galaxies, and other very energetic objects.

Astro-E2 is a joint effort of NASA and the Japanese space agency ISAS. It is to be launched February 2005 aboard a Japanese M-V rocket.

CGRO
The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) is one of four "Great Observatories" studying the universe. Weighing 15.3 metric tons (35,000 pounds), the observatory is the heaviest science spacecraft ever deployed by the Space Shuttle.  CGRO carries a complement of four instruments, which provide simultaneous observations covering more than five decades of energy from 0.1 MeV to 30 GeV: the Burst and Transient Source Experiment, the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment, the Imaging Compton Telescope, and the Energetic Gamma-Ray Experiment Telescope.

CGRO was deorbited in June 2000.

GRO NASA Facts

During the two-year mission, the Cluster spacecraft will travel around the Earth in a tetrahedral, or triangular, pyramid formation, collecting data where the solar wind impacts the Earth's magnetic field. The unprecedented detail provided by this mission will enable scientists to assemble the first thorough 3D maps of the environment, which surrounds and protects our planet.

The COBE Legacy poster is available at no charge for educational purposes. To request a copy, fill out the form at: http://space.gsfc.nasa.gov/astro/posters/cobeposter.html.

For special requests or questions about poster distribution, please contact request@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov.

EUVE
NASA's Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) satellite was launched on 07 June 1992 from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., aboard a Delta II rocket. The launch heralds a major step forward in understanding the physics of astronomical objects seen in a newly opened window of the electromagnetic spectrum called the extreme ultraviolet.

EUVE is the first satellite to make both spectroscopic and wide-band observations over the entire extreme ultraviolet region. This unique satellite consists of three scanner telescopes and a dual-purpose survey/spectrometer telescope. EUVE is mapping the entire sky to determine the existence, direction, brightness and temperature of numerous objects that are sources of extreme ultraviolet radiation. Some of the objects EUVE is likely to detect are white dwarf stars, neutron stars, binary star systems and the hot outer atmospheres of red dwarf stars and stars similar to our Sun.

EUVE was deorbited in January 2002.

CONTOUR
The Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) is a NASA Discovery mission, which launched July 1, 2002. CONTOUR will visit and study at least two comets, providing scientists around the world a close up look at the diversity of these original building blocks of the solar system.

Comets are believed to have formed some 4.6 billion years ago, when the planets began to take shape, and they preserve a record of the chemical and physical processes at work at that distant time.

CONTOUR will fly by Comet Encke in 2003 and Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 sometime in 2006, visiting each during the peak of their activity, close to the Sun.

FAST
The Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer (FAST) satellite is the one of NASA's Small-Class Explorer (SMEX) missions. It will investigate the plasma physics of the auroral phenomena which occur around both poles of the Earth. This will be accomplished by taking high data rate snapshots with electric and magnetic fields sensors, and plasma particle instruments, while traversing through the auroral regions.

FAST circles the Earth in a near-polar, highly elliptical orbit. Its payload consists of four experiments: the Electric Field Experiment, Magnetic Field Experiment, Time-of-Flight Energy Angle Mass Spectrograph, and Electrostatic Analyzers.  FAST launched August 21, 1996.

GLAST

The Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) will open this high-energy world to exploration and help us to answer these questions. With GLAST, astronomers will at long last have a superior tool to study how black holes, notorious for pulling matter in, can accelerate jets of gas outward at fantastic speeds. Physicists will be able to study subatomic particles at energies far greater than those seen in ground-based particle accelerators. And cosmologists will gain valuable information about the birth and early evolution of the Universe.

For this unique endeavor -- one that brings together the astrophysics and particle physics communities -- NASA is teaming up with the U.S. Department of Energy and institutions in France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Sweden. The launch is scheduled for September of 2006.

HETE-2 will detect hundreds of bursts during its planned four-year mission lifetime. For many of these bursts, it will provide very detailed information about their location and spectra, or light characteristics.

NASA's HETE-1, the Argentine SAC-B spacecraft, as well as part of the Pegasus launch vehicle are believed to have reentered the Earth's atmosphere at approximately 10:55 p.m. EST on April 6. The final notification from Space Command indicates that debris re-entered at 31.5 degrees North and 92.4 degrees East.

HST
The Hubble Servicing Missions, performed on orbit by Shuttle astronauts, replace and/or maintain vital components aboard the Hubble Space Telescope.

For information on each of the servicing missions, visit the following links:

- First Servicing Mission
- 2nd Servicing Mission
- 3A Servicing Mission
- 3B Servicing Mission

Hubble Fact Sheets

ICE
The International Cometary Explorer (ICE) launched August 12, 1978. ISEE-3 was renamed ICE (International Cometary Explorer) when, after completing its original mission in 1982, it was gravitationally manuvuered to intercept the comet P/Giacobini-Zinner. On September 11, 1985, the veteran NASA spacecraft flew through the comet's tail.

ICE's primary objectives are to determine the composition and physical state of the Giacobini-Zinner comet's nucleus; determine the processes that govern the composition and distribution of neutral and ionized species in the cometary atmosphere; and investigate the interaction between the solar wind and the cometary atmosphere.

In 1991, NASA approved an extended ICE mission for the continued investigation of coronal mass ejections, continued cosmic ray studies, and coordinated observations with Ulysses. As of January 1990, the satellite was in a 355 day heliocentric orbit and is scheduled to return to the vicinity of the Earth-moon system in August 2014.

IMAGE
NASA's Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. aboard a Delta II rocket on March 25, 2000. Instruments aboard the spacecraft use neutral atom, ultraviolet, and radio imaging techniques to:

-Identify the dominant mechanisms for injecting plasma into the magnetosphere on substorm and magnetic storm time scales;
-Determine the directly driven response of the magnetosphere to solar wind changes; and,
-Discover how and where magnetospheric plasmas are energized, transported, and subsequently lost during substorms and magnetic storms.

IMP-8
Launched on a Delta rocket on 26 October 1973, IMP-8 measured magnetic fields, plasmas, and energetic charged particles (e.g. cosmic rays) of the Earth's magnetotail and magnetosheath and of the near-Earth solar wind. IMP-8 was the last of ten Interplanetary Monitoring Platforms, or AIMP (Anchored -IMP) spacecraft launched during a 10 year period.

NASA decommissioned the spacecraft on October 28, 2001. IMP-8 was an important adjunct to the International Solar Terrestrial Physics program, providing data for the deep space Pioneer, Voyager, and Ulysses missions. It also was the longest-lived geocentric space physics mission NASA has ever flown.

IUE
The International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) satellite was a collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the United Kingdom. The satellite, launched in January 1978, had a five-year mission goal.

IUE functioned for 18 years until it was decommissioned on 30 September, 1996.

MAP
The Microwave Anisotropy Probe spaceraft, or MAP, is making the first ever detailed map of our early universe. Recording temperature fluctuations of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation with much higher resolution, sensitivity and accuracy than COBE, the new information contained in these finer fluctuations will shed light on several current key questions in cosmology.

MAP launched June 30, 2001 aboard a Delta-II rocket.

POLAR
The Polar spacecraft, launched from Vandenberg AFB, Calif. on 24 February 1996 aboard a Delta rocket, is the second mission in NASA's Global Geospace Science program.

Polar is still performing simultaneous, coordinated measurements of the key regions of Earth's geospace, or space environment, with the WIND spacecraft, launched in November 1994 to measure the solar wind properties.

POLAR Laboratory

RHESSI
NASA's Ramaty High-Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft, or RHESSI, studies solar flares - the solar system's mightiest explosions in the atmosphere of the Sun.

During its planned two-year mission, RHESSI's unprecedented ability to make images of solar flares in X-rays and gamma rays will enable scientists for the first time to track accelerated flare particles, exploring the sudden energy release in a way never before possible.

RHESSI is the sixth Small Explorer (SMEX) mission. The principal investigator institution is the University of California, Berkeley, which has responsibility for most aspects of the mission, including instrument and spacecraft development, mission operations and data analysis.

SAMPEX
NASA's Solar, Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX) satellite, is contributing new information on the composition of energetic particles arriving at Earth from the solar atmosphere and interstellar space. This small explorer launched in July 1992 is carrying a payload of four particle detectors designed to detect solar energetic particles, precipitating energetic electrons, anomalous cosmic rays and galactic cosmic rays.

SAMPEX was developed by Goddard's Small Explorer project.

SOHO
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is part of NASA's International Solar Terrestrial Physics program.

Launched December 2, 1995 on an Atlas-Centaur IIAS rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Station, Fla., SOHO studies the physical processes taking place in the Sun's corona and changes in the Sun's interior by conducting remote sensing observations in visible, ultraviolet, and extreme ultraviolet light.

Goddard provides mission operations and network support.

SWAS
NASA's Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) is a NASA Small Explorer Project (SMEX) was launched into low Earth orbit on December 05, 1998. The primary objective of SWAS is to survey water, molecular oxygen, carbon, and isotopic carbon monoxide emission in a variety of galactic star forming regions. The SWAS Science Operations Center is located at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Each December SWAS returns to the orbital configuration that it had at launch. Targets visible to the satellite at the beginning of the mission become available once more for observation. SWAS has made a transition into an observing mode where it is making more detailed studies of particular objects (that is, deep integrations and mapping operations), as well as continuing to observe new objects as they become available.

SWAS is the third mission in NASA's Small Explorers Program.

Swift

Swift is a first-of-its-kind multiwavelength observatory dedicated to the study of gamma-ray bursts. The main mission objectives are:

- Determine the origin of gamma-ray bursts.
- Classify gamma-ray bursts as well as search for new types.
- Determine how the blastwave evolve and interacts with the   surroundings.
- Use gamma-ray bursts to study the early universe.
- Perform a sensitive survey of the sky in the hard X-ray band.

Swift is a NASA medium-sized explorer (MIDEX) mission being developed by an international collaboration for launch in September 2003.

TIMED
Launched December 7, 2001 aboard a Delta II rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., the Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission is studying a mysterious region of our atmosphere located about 40 to 110 miles above the Earth. Known as the Mesopshere, Lower Thermosphere/Ionosphere, or MLTI, air pressure here is a thousand to a trillion times less than at sea level.

During its planned two-year mission, TIMED will study the basic structure of the MLTI, its chemistry and the flow of energy to and from this layer of our atmosphere.

TRACE
The Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) is the first U.S. solar research satellite to observe the Sun continuously without occultation by the Earth for part of every orbit.

Flown in combination with the SOHO mission, TRACE provides an unprecedented opportunity to follow the emergence of magnetic flux from the base of the convection zone deep inside the Sun, through the photosphere, chromosphere and transitional region, to the low-beta outer corona, while observing the effects of this emergence, such as coronal mass ejections, with high spatial and temporal resolution.

WIND
Launched November 1, 1994 aboard a Delta II rocket, Wind is the first of two NASA spacecraft in the Global Geospace Science initiative (GGS) and part of the ISTP Project.

The science objectives of the WIND mission are to:
- Provide conplete plasma, energetic particle, and magnetic field input for magnetospheric and ionospheric
studies;
- Determine the magnetospheric output to interplanetary space in the up-stream region;
- Investigate basic plasma processes occuring in the near-Earth solar wind; and
- Provide baseline ecliptic plane observations to be used in heliospheric latitudes from ULYSSES.

The spacecraft is controlled daily by the GGS Flight Operations Team at Goddard (via the Deep Space Network of antennas).