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 * Category 7 – Space Telescopes **
 * Hubble || NASA Current ||
 * Explorer 1 || JPL Past ||
 * XMM – Newton || NASA Current ||
 * Spitzer Space Telescope || JPL Current ||
 * Chandra || NASA Current ||
 * Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) || NASA Current ||
 * INTEGRAL || NASA Current ||

The Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) is a satellite that observes the fast-moving, high-energy worlds of black holes, neutron stars, X-ray pulsars and bursts of X-rays that light up the sky and then disappear forever. How fast and how energetic are they? Well, some pulsars spin faster than a thousand times a second. And a neutron star produces a gravitational pull so powerful that a marshmallow striking the star's surface would hit with the force of a thousand hydrogen bombs. Astronomers study changes that happen from microseconds to months in cosmic objects to learn about how gravity works near black holes, how pulsars in binary systems are affected by mass transferring from one star to the other, and how the giant engines in distant galaxies are powered. RXTE was launched into low-Earth orbit on December 30, 1995, and is still going strong, making unique contributions to our understanding of these extreme objects.

For RXTE, the trick to observing these kinds of objects is all in the timing -- an ability to observe changes in X-ray brightness that occur in a mere thousandths of a second, or over several years. Learn more about how this one-of-a-kind satellite has reshaped our understanding of what goes on in the most violent and bizarre regions of the Universe.

__**//INTERGAL://**__ > on record (GRB 031203) ESA's **INTE**rnational **G**amma-**R**ay **A**strophysics **L**aboratory is detecting some of the most energetic radiation that comes from space. It is the most sensitive gamma-ray observatory ever launched. INTEGRAL is an ESA mission in cooperation with Russia and the United States. ||
 * **ACHIEVEMENTS:**
 * Spectral measurements of gamma-ray sources
 * Detection of gamma-ray bursts, including the closest and faintest
 * Mapping the galactic plane in gamma-rays
 * Resolving diffuse gamma-ray emission from galactic centre
 * Providing supporting evidence for torii in AGN
 * Finding new class of highly absorbed objects ||
 * **THE MISSION:**
 * //__Hubble:__//**Astronauts will travel to the Hubble Space Telescope this summer, installing new instruments and other components during Servicing Mission 4. But before these components are cleared for launch, they go through one final checkup in the world’s largest clean room at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

“The High Bay Clean Room is to Hubble what hospital operating rooms are to patients,” says Mike Weiss, Hubble’s technical deputy program manager at Goddard. “Surgeons wear sterile gowns, gloves and masks during surgery, and operating rooms must be kept free of germs to keep patients healthy. In our case, Hubble is the patient.”

This series will be published monthly through July 2008. It explores topics related to NASA's journey back to the Hubble Space Telescope. These features strive to tell the stories of the team behind Hubble, the telescope itself and the amazing steps it takes in observing our universe's many wonders.
 * //__Explorer 1:__//**Explorer 1 was the first satellite launched by the United States when it was sent into space on January 31, 1958. Following the launch of the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency was directed to launch a satellite using its Jupiter C rocket developed under the direction of Dr. Wernher von Braun. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory received the assignment to design, build and operate the artificial satellite that would serve as the rocket's payload. JPL completed this job in less than three months.

The primary science instrument on Explorer 1 was a cosmic ray detector designed to measure the radiation environment in Earth orbit. Once in space this experiment, provided by Dr. James Van Allen of the University of Iowa, revealed a much lower cosmic ray count than expected. Van Allen theorized that the instrument may have been saturated by very strong radiation from a belt of charged particles trapped in space by Earth's magnetic field. The existence of these radiation belts was confirmed by another U.S. satellite launched two months later, and they became known as the Van Allen Belts in honor of their discoverer

The Spitzer Space Telescope, formerly known as the Space Infrared Telescope Facility (SIRTF), is an infrared telescope that will study the early universe, young galaxies and forming stars, and will detect dust discs around stars, considered an important signpost of planetary formation. The mission is the fourth and final observatory under NASA’s Great Observatories program, which also includes the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra X-Ray Observatory and Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. It is also the first new mission under NASA’s Origins program, which seeks to answer the questions: Where did we come from? Are we alone? An infrared cousin of the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope consists of a cryogenically cooled telescope with lightweight optics that deliver light to advanced, large-format infrared detector arrays. It will be launched into orbit around the Sun, trailing behind Earth, drifting in a benign thermal environment. By using this orbit, the spacecraft is able to adopt an innovative "warm-launch" architecture, in which only the instrument payload is cooled at launch. By using special cooling in deep space, SIRTF is able to carry far less liquid helium than any previous infrared mission, which substantially reduces mission development costs. Partnering with JPL are the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which is responsible for science operations; Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company, Sunnyvale, Calif.; Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.; Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass.; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; and the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz. In addition, science teams have been selected to represent a number of different universities and/or research organizations.
 * //__SPITZER SPACE TELESCOPE:__//**

1) What was the first space telescope to be set off into space? 2) What telescope has and displays as a infrared scope? 3)What was the first satellite in the U.S. to be launch?
 * //__question quiz__//**

JPL PAST Missions http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/past_missions.cfm JPL CURRENT Missions http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/index.cfm NASA CURRENT Missions http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html