Mission Archive

NASA · 1991

Low Earth orbit

The second of NASA's Great Observatories, which studied the Universe in gamma rays and showed that gamma-ray bursts come from all directions in the sky. At 17 tonnes it was the heaviest astrophysics payload flown at the time.

NASA/DLR/SERC · 1990

Low Earth orbit

A German-led X-ray observatory, built with the United States and the United Kingdom, that made the first imaging X-ray survey of the whole sky and catalogued more than 150,000 sources.

NASA/ESA · 1990

Low Earth orbit

Space telescope capable of observing the universe in ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light.

NASA · 1989

Low Earth orbit

The Cosmic Background Explorer, which measured the faint glow left over from the Big Bang and showed it has an almost perfect black-body spectrum with tiny temperature variations. The work earned the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

ESA · 1989

High Earth orbit

The first space mission devoted to measuring the positions, distances and motions of stars. It was stranded in the wrong orbit by a motor failure but still measured about 118,000 stars with high precision.

NASA/SERC/NIVR · 1983

Low Earth orbit

The Infrared Astronomical Satellite, the first telescope to survey the whole sky in infrared light, flown jointly by the United States, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. In ten months it catalogued about 350,000 sources.

NASA/ESA/SERC · 1978

High Earth orbit

The International Ultraviolet Explorer, run jointly by NASA, ESA and the United Kingdom. Planned for three years, it worked for nearly nineteen and was the first space telescope astronomers could operate in real time.

NASA · 1970

Low Earth orbit

The first satellite built specifically for X-ray astronomy. Launched from a platform off the coast of Kenya, it produced the first full catalogue of X-ray sources in the sky.