4+-+10

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 * Category 10 - Other Cool Stuff **
 * Starshine || [|www.azinet.com/starshine] ||
 * Stardust || JPL & NASA Current ||
 * Deep Impact || JPL & NASA Current ||
 * Dawn || JPL & NASA Current ||
 * GALEX || NASA Current ||
 * EPOXI || NASA Current ||
 * WMAP || NASA Current ||
 * Deep Space 1 || JPL Past ||

 ·  The mission started February 7, 2008  ·  NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is aiming its largest telescope at five stars in a search for alien (exosolar) planets as it enters its extended mission, called **Epoxi.**   ·  New evidence that a sea of cosmic neutrinos permeates the universe  ·  Clear evidence the first stars took more than a half-billion years to create a cosmic fog  ·  Tight new constraints on the burst of expansion in the universe's first trillionth of a second Deep Space 1 o  In the mid-1990s, a NASA program was created at JPL called New Millennium o  designed to flight-test new technologies for future space and Earth-observing missions. o  The first flight project created under New Millennium was Deep Space 1, a spacecraft built to test a dozen new technologies including an ion engine. o  Launched October 24, 1998, o  On July 29, 1999, the spacecraft flew by asteroid 9969 Braille. o  Since its primary mission ended in September 1999, Deep Space 1 went on an extended mission flying by comet Borrelly in September 2001. o  This successful flyby resulted in the best ever images of a comet's nucleus.
 * __EPOXI__**
 * Deep Impact made history when the mission team directed an impactor from the spacecraft into comet Tempel 1 on July 4, 2005.
 * NASA recently extended the mission, redirecting the spacecraft for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Oct. 11, 2010.
 * EPOXI is hunting for planets similar to the size of earth
 * Deep Impact will also look back to observe Earth in visible and infrared wavelengths, allowing comparisons with future discoveries of Earth-like planets around other stars.
 * The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.
 * __WAMP__**
 * Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe
 * WMAP measures the composition of the universe.
 * The composition varies as the universe expands:
 * the dark matter and atoms become less dense as the universe expands, like an ordinary gas, but the photon and neutrino particles also lose energy as the universe expands
 * It appears that the dark energy density does not decrease at all, so it now dominates the universe even though it was a tiny contributor 13.7 billion years ago

Starshine Stardust ·  A space craft built to fly though the cloud of dust that surrounds the nucleus of a comet, and for the first time ever, will bring cometary material back to earth. ·  The first U.S. mission dedicated solely to a comet and will be the first to return extraterrestrial material from outside the orbit of the Moon. ·  On January 15 2006, a sample of the comet Wild-2 landed in Utah, carrying samples of comet and interstellar dust. ·  Throughout the entire mission, stardust traveled a total of 2.8 billion miles.
 * 3 Starshine satellites have been launched over the last 6 years.
 * Starshine receives no formal funding and operates by means of contributions of materials and labor from its member individuals and institutions.
 * The satellites have been designed by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and built by an informal, volunteer coalition of organizations and individuals in the USA and Canada.

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