"2012 National Reconnaissance Office space telescope donation to NASA The 2012 National Reconnaissance Office space telescope donation to NASA was the declassification and donation to NASA of two identical space telescopes by the United States National Reconnaissance Office. The donation has been described by scientists as a substantial improvement over NASA's current Hubble Space Telescope. Although the telescopes themselves are being given to NASA at no cost, the space agency must still pay for the cost of instruments and electronics for the telescopes, as well as the launch of the telescopes. On February 17, 2016, the Wide Field Infrared Survey"
"Telescope (HST) is a space telescope that was carried into orbit by a Space Shuttle in April 1990. It is named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble. Although not the first space telescope, Hubble is one of the largest and most versatile, and is well known as both a vital research tool and a public relations boon for astronomy. The HST is a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, and is one of NASA's Great Observatories, along with the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The HST's success has paved the way"
"Spitzer Space Telescope The Spitzer Space Telescope (SST), formerly the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), is an infrared space telescope launched in 2003 and still operating as of 2018. It is the fourth and final of the NASA Great Observatories program. The planned mission period was to be 2.5 years with a pre-launch expectation that the mission could extend to five or slightly more years until the onboard liquid helium supply was exhausted. This occurred on 15 May 2009. Without liquid helium to cool the telescope to the very low temperatures needed to operate, most of the instruments are no"
"Herschel Space Observatory The Herschel Space Observatory was a space observatory built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA). It was active from 2009 to 2013, and was the largest infrared telescope ever launched, carrying a mirror and instruments sensitive to the far infrared and submillimetre wavebands (55–672 µm). ""Herschel"" was the fourth and final cornerstone mission in the Horizon 2000 programme, following ""SOHO""/""Cluster II"", ""XMM-Newton"" and ""Rosetta"". NASA is a partner in the ""Herschel"" mission, with US participants contributing to the mission; providing mission-enabling instrument technology and sponsoring the NASA Herschel Science Center (NHSC) at the Infrared Processing"
"atmosphere. This allows for much clearer observations, as the Earth's atmosphere is not disrupting the image and viewing quality of the telescope, meaning objects can be observed in much greater detail, and much more distant or low-light objects may be observed. Additionally, this means that observations are able to be made at any time, rather than only during the night. The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope created by NASA, and was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990. It is still in operation today. The Hubble Space Telescope's four main instruments observe in the near ultraviolet, visible, and"
"repaired, upgraded, and replaced systems on the telescope, including all five of the main instruments. The fifth mission was initially canceled on safety grounds following the ""Columbia"" disaster (2003). However, after spirited public discussion, NASA administrator Mike Griffin approved the fifth servicing mission, completed in 2009. The telescope is operating , and could last until 2030–2040. Its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is scheduled for launch in March 2021. In 1923, Hermann Oberth—considered a father of modern rocketry, along with Robert H. Goddard and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky—published """" (""The Rocket into Planetary Space""), which mentioned how a telescope could"
"Kepler (spacecraft) Kepler is a retired space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine years of operation, the telescope's reaction control system fuel was depleted, and NASA announced its retirement on October 30, 2018. Designed to survey a portion of Earth's region of the Milky Way to discover Earth-size exoplanets in or near habitable zones and estimate how many of the billions of stars in the Milky Way have"
"Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope The Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) was a space telescope designed to make spectroscopic observations in the far-ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It was flown into orbit on the Space Shuttle and operated from the Shuttle's payload bay on two occasions: in December 1990, as part of Shuttle mission STS-35, and in March 1995, as part of mission STS-67. HUT was designed and built by a team based at Johns Hopkins University, led by Arthur Davidsen. The telescope consisted of a 90 cm main mirror used to focus ultraviolet light onto a spectrograph situated at the prime"
"on Astro-2 (in 1995). HUT is on display at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. in the United States. Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope The Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope (HUT) was a space telescope designed to make spectroscopic observations in the far-ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum. It was flown into orbit on the Space Shuttle and operated from the Shuttle's payload bay on two occasions: in December 1990, as part of Shuttle mission STS-35, and in March 1995, as part of mission STS-67. HUT was designed and built by a team based at Johns Hopkins University, led by"
"which had been placed in orbit on 24 April 1990 by ""Discovery"" during STS-31. The first servicing mission was done by Space Shuttle ""Endeavour"" on STS-61. Work performed by ""Discovery's"" crew significantly upgraded the scientific capabilities of the HST and helped to keep the telescope functioning smoothly until the next scheduled servicing missions, which were STS-103 in 1999 and STS-109 in 2002. On the third day of the mission, ""Discovery's"" seven-member crew conducted the first of four spacewalks (also called Extra-vehicular Activities or ""EVAs"") to remove two older instruments and install two new astronomy instruments, as well as perform other"
", 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"
"spheres were also manufactured and measured for comparison to the one in orbit. Lincoln Calibration Sphere 1 The Lincoln Calibration Sphere 1, or LCS-1, is a large aluminium sphere in Earth orbit since 6 May 1965. It is the oldest spacecraft still in use, having lasted for over 50 years. It was launched along with the Lincoln Experimental Satellite-2 on a Titan IIIA. It is technically the oldest operational spacecraft, but it has no power supply or fuel; it is merely a metal sphere. It has been used for radar calibration since its launch. It was built by Rohr. Corp."
"in 1984. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, remains in service and continues to grow in capability thanks to its modular design and multiple servicing missions by the Space Shuttle. Early this decade, another mission Goddard managed, the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory launched, which observed 2,700 gammy ray-bursts and definitively showed that the majority of gamma-ray bursts must originate in distant galaxies and therefore must be enormously energetic. A quote from the official history of Goddard states: Today, the Center remains involved in each of NASA's key programs. Goddard has developed more instruments for planetary exploration than any other"
"Lincoln Calibration Sphere 1 The Lincoln Calibration Sphere 1, or LCS-1, is a large aluminium sphere in Earth orbit since 6 May 1965. It is the oldest spacecraft still in use, having lasted for over 50 years. It was launched along with the Lincoln Experimental Satellite-2 on a Titan IIIA. It is technically the oldest operational spacecraft, but it has no power supply or fuel; it is merely a metal sphere. It has been used for radar calibration since its launch. It was built by Rohr. Corp. for the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. LCS-1 is a hollow sphere in diameter with"
"program, was the Hubble Space Telescope, which as mentioned above was brought into orbit in 1990. The inner Solar System has been made the goal of at least four unmanned programs. The first was Mariner in the 1960s and '70s, which made multiple visits to Venus and Mars and one to Mercury. Probes launched under the Mariner program were also the first to make a planetary flyby (Mariner 2), to take the first pictures from another planet (Mariner 4), the first planetary orbiter (Mariner 9), and the first to make a gravity assist maneuver (Mariner 10). This is a technique"
"by Arianespace using a Soyuz ST-B/Fregat-MT rocket flying from Kourou in French Guiana. The spacecraft currently operates in a Lissajous orbit around the Sun–Earth L Lagrangian point. The ""Gaia"" space telescope has its roots in ESA's Hipparcos mission (1989–1993). Its mission was proposed in October 1993 by Lennart Lindegren (Lund University, Sweden) and Michael Perryman (ESA) in response to a call for proposals for ESA's Horizon Plus long-term scientific programme. It was adopted by ESA's Science Programme Committee as cornerstone mission number 6 on 13 October 2000, and the B2 phase of the project was authorised on 9 February 2006,"
"Jeffrey A. Hoffman Jeffrey Alan Hoffman (born November 2, 1944) is an American former NASA astronaut and currently a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. Hoffman made five flights as a space shuttle astronaut, including the first mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, when the orbiting telescope's flawed optical system was corrected. Trained as an astrophysicist, he also flew on the 1990 Spacelab shuttle mission that featured the Astro-1 ultraviolet astronomical observatory in the shuttle's payload bay. Over the course of his five missions he logged more than 1,211 hours and 21.5 million miles in space."
"UARS finished its scientific career in 2005. The INTEGRAL is an operational space satellite launched by the European Space Agency in 2002. INTEGRAL provides insight into the most energetic forms of in space, such as black holes, neutron stars, and supernovas. INTEGRAL also plays an important role in researching one of the most exotic and energetic phenomena that occurs in space, gamma-rays. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and it sped humanity to one of its greatest advances to understand the universe. The discoveries made by the HTS have changed the way scientists look at the universe. It"
"Exploration of Neptune The exploration of Neptune has only begun with one spacecraft, ""Voyager 2"" in 1989. Currently there are no approved future missions to visit the Neptunian system. NASA, ESA and also independent academic groups have proposed future scientific missions to visit Neptune. Some mission plans are still active, while others have been abandoned or put on hold. Neptune has also been scientifically studied from afar with telescopes, primarily since the mid 1990s. This includes the Hubble Space Telescope but most importantly ground-based telescopes using adaptive optics. After having visited Saturn successfully, it was decided to continue and fund"
"current, safe orbit, away from Earth. The spacecraft was deactivated with a ""goodnight"" command sent from the mission's control center at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics on November 15, 2018. ""Kepler""s retirement coincides with the 388th anniversary of Johannes Kepler's death in 1630. Kepler (spacecraft) Kepler is a retired space observatory launched by NASA to discover Earth-size planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched on March 7, 2009, into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit. The principal investigator was William J. Borucki. After nine years of operation, the telescope's reaction control system fuel was"
"Gamma (satellite) Gamma was a Soviet gamma ray telescope. It was launched on 11 July 1990 into an orbit around Earth with a height of 375 km and an inclination of 51.6 degrees. It lasted for around 2 years. On board the mission were three telescopes, all of which could be pointed at the same source. The project was a joint Soviet-French project. The Gamma-1 telescope was the main telescope. It consisted of 2 scintillation counters and a gas Cerenkov counter. With an effective area of around , it operated in the energy range of 50 MeV to 6 GeV."
"Space Place. The Thomas Cooke telescope is the main telescope in regular use at Space Place. It was manufactured in 1867 in York, England by T. Cooke & Sons, and originally installed at an observatory near Halifax, West Yorkshire. The astronomers Edward Crossley and Joseph Gledhill used the telescope over the course of several decades for their astronomical research. A Grubb & Parsons clock drive was added to the telescope in 1879, and this still serves as the telescope's mechanical tracking system. The telescope’s original lens was a 9-inch achromat, which was replaced with a 9-inch Cooke photovisual objective in"
"resulted in Hubble performance considerably better than planned at its origin. It is now expected that the Hubble will remain operational until its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), is available in 2018. The Chandra X-ray Observatory, originating at MSFC, was launched on July 3, 1999, and is operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. With an angular resolution of 0.5 arcsecond (2.4 µrad), it has a thousand times better resolution than the first orbiting X-ray telescopes. Its highly eliptical orbit allows continuous observations up to 85 percent of its 65-hour orbital period. With its ability to make X-ray images"
"near infrared spectra. Hubble's images are some of the most detailed images ever taken, leading to many breakthroughs in astrophysics, such as accurately determining the rate of expansion of the universe. The James Webb Space Telescope is the formal successor of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is set to launch in March 30, 2021, and is ""one of the most ambitious and technically complex missions NASA has ever set its focus upon."" The James Webb Space Telescope is a space-based telescope, and is set to orbit near the second Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system, 1,500,000 kilometers (930,000 miles) from"
"ESO 3.6 m Telescope The ESO 3.6 m Telescope is an optical reflecting telescope run by the European Southern Observatory at La Silla Observatory, Chile since 1977, with a clear aperture of about and area. The telescopes uses the HARPS instrument and has discovered more than 130 exoplanets. In 2012, it discovered Alpha Centauri Bb, a now-disproven possible planet in the Alpha Centauri system only 4.4 light-years away. It saw first light in 1976 and entered full operations in 1977. It received an overhaul in 1999 and a new secondary in 2004. When completed in the late 1970s, it was"
"Great Observatories program NASA's series of Great Observatories satellites are four large, powerful space-based astronomical telescopes. Each of the four missions was designed to examine a specific wavelength/energy region of the electromagnetic spectrum (gamma rays, X-rays, visible and ultraviolet light, infrared light) using very different technologies. Charles Pellerin implemented the program. The four Great Observatories were launched between 1990 and 2003 and three remain operational as of 2018. Of these spacecraft, only the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory is not operating as of 2018; one of its gyroscopes failed, and NASA ordered it to be de-orbited on June 4, 2000. Parts"
"In the meantime, in 1978, NASA launched the first imaging X-ray telescope, Einstein (HEAO-2), into orbit. Work continued on the Chandra project through the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992, to reduce costs, the spacecraft was redesigned. Four of the twelve planned mirrors were eliminated, as were two of the six scientific instruments. Chandra's planned orbit was changed to an elliptical one, reaching one third of the way to the Moon's at its farthest point. This eliminated the possibility of improvement or repair by the space shuttle but put the observatory above the Earth's radiation belts for most of its orbit."
"through partnership programmes with NASA. In the 1980s and 1990s, the Spacelab programme was an ESA-NASA joint research programme that had ESA develop and manufacture orbital labs for the Space Shuttle for several flights on which ESA participate with astronauts in experiments. In robotic science mission and exploration missions, NASA has been ESA's main partner. Cassini–Huygens was a joint NASA-ESA mission, along with the Infrared Space Observatory, INTEGRAL, SOHO, and others. Also, the Hubble space telescope is a joint project of NASA and ESA. Future ESA-NASA joint projects include the James Webb Space Telescope and the proposed Laser Interferometer Space"
"built, Spitzer's vision ultimately materialized into the world's first space-based optical telescope, ""Hubble Space Telescope"", which was launched on April 20, 1990 by the Space Shuttle ""Discovery"" (STS-31). 1946 Blowout preventer (annular) An annular blowout preventer is a large valve that uses a wedge to seal off a wellhead. It has a donut-like rubber seal, known as an elastomeric packing unit, reinforced with steel ribs. During drilling or well interventions, the valve may be closed if overpressure from an underground zone causes formation fluids such as oil or natural gas to enter the wellbore and threaten the rig. The annular"
"since early 1984, and is on indefinite loan to ESO from the Max Planck Society ( or MPG). Telescope time is shared between MPG and ESO observing programmes, while the operation and maintenance of the telescope are ESO's responsibility. However, due to a new agreement between the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) and ESO, the instrument is operated by MPG until the end of September 2016. The telescope hosts three instruments: the 67-million pixel Wide Field Imager with a field of view as large as the full Moon, which has taken many amazing images of celestial objects; GROND, the"
"Deep Space Climate Observatory Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR; formerly known as Triana, unofficially known as GoreSat) is a NOAA space weather and Earth observation satellite. It was launched by SpaceX on a Falcon 9 launch vehicle on February 11, 2015, from Cape Canaveral. It was originally developed as a NASA satellite proposed in 1998 by then-Vice President Al Gore for the purpose of Earth observation. It is in a Lissajous orbit at the Sun–Earth Lagrangian point, from Earth, to monitor variable solar wind condition, provide early warning of approaching coronal mass ejections and observe phenomena on Earth, including changes"
"and various universities, as well as the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Successors to CGRO include the ESA INTEGRAL spacecraft (launched 2002), NASA's Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Mission (launched 2004) and NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (launched 2008); all three remain operational as of 2017. CGRO carried a complement of four instruments that covered an unprecedented six decades of the electromagnetic spectrum, from 20 keV to 30 GeV (from 0.02 MeV to 30000 MeV). In order of increasing spectral energy coverage: The Burst and Transient Source Experiment, (BATSE) by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center searched the sky for gamma ray bursts (20"
"STS-31 STS-31 was the thirty-fifth mission of the American Space Shuttle program, which launched the Hubble Space Telescope astronomical observatory into Earth orbit. The mission used the Space Shuttle ""Discovery"" (the tenth for this orbiter), which lifted off from Launch Complex 39B on 24 April 1990 from Kennedy Space Center, Florida. ""Discovery""<nowiki>'</nowiki>s crew deployed the telescope on 25 April, and spent the rest of the mission tending to various scientific experiments in the shuttle's payload bay and operating a set of IMAX cameras to record the mission. ""Discovery""'s launch marked the first time since January 1986 that two Space Shuttles"