Featured Projects
COSI
COSI is a wide field of view gamma-ray telescope that obtains high spectral resolution from 0.2 to 5 MeV, enabling sensitive narrow line imaging of the entire Galaxy.
ESCAPADE
NASA ESCAPADE is the first UC Berkeley-led planetary mission. Its two identical satellites, Blue and Gold, will provide an unprecedented stereo view of Mars magnetosphere.…
Psyche
Psyche is both the name of an asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter — and the name of a NASA space mission to…
Carruthers Geocorona Observatory
NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will image Earth’s exosphere. The exosphere is the outermost layer of the atmosphere, and the geocorona is the light that emanates…
All Projects
Genesis
NASA’s Genesis spacecraft spent more than two years collecting samples of the solar wind. The spacecraft then brought the sample canister back to Earth where it parachuted to the ground. Despite a hard landing in…
GIOTTO
Giotto was ESA’s first deep-space mission. In 1986, it passed closest to the nucleus of a comet, Halley. Its images showed for the first time the shape of a comet nucleus and found the first…
GREECE
The purpose of the Ground-to-Rocket Electrodynamics-Electrons Correlative Experiment (GREECE) was to significantly enhance our knowledge of the structure and dynamics of the electron precipitation responsible for the aurora, on both large and small scales, which…
GRIPS-2
The Gamma Ray Imager/Polarimeter for Solar flares (GRIPS-2) is a high-altitude balloon payload designed to study particle acceleration and transport in impulsive solar-flares. It flew over Antarctica in January 2016 at a height of 130,000…
ICON
The goal of the Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission was to understand the tug-of-war between Earth’s atmosphere and the space environment. In the “no man’s land” of the ionosphere, a continuous struggle between solar forcing…
IMAGE
The IMAGE spacecraft was launched on 25 March 2000. IMAGE was the first satellite mission dedicated to imaging the Earth’s magnetosphere, the region of space controlled by the Earth’s magnetic field and containing extremely tenuous plasmas…
IMAP
The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, explores and maps the very boundaries of our heliosphere — a huge bubble created by the Sun’s wind that encapsulates our entire solar system — and studies…
IMP 1-6
The Interplanetary Monitoring Platform (IMP) satellites were designed to study the boundary between Earth’s magnetic environment and interplanetary space, along with the radiation – both from the sun and from outside the solar system –…
ISEE-3/ICE
NASA’s International Sun-Earth Explorer-3 (ISEE-3) conducted the first deep survey of Earth’s magnetic tail. Then, after a series of complex flybys of the Moon, the spacecraft was renamed the International Cometary Explorer (ICE) and became…
ISI
The Infrared Spatial Interferometer (ISI) is a three-telescope interferometric array that uses heterodyne detection at 11 microns wavelength (27 THz). Measurements of the sizes, shapes and changes of red giant stars and their dust envelopes.…