SMEX Project History

Mission Set One

SAMPEX, the Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer, was successfully launched by a Scout rocket on July 3, 1992. It is investigating the composition of local interstellar matter and solar material and the transport of magnetospheric charged particles into the Earth's atmosphere.

FAST, the Fast Auroral Snapshot Explorer, was launched August 21, 1996 aboard a Pegasus XL vehicle. FAST is probing the physical processes that produce aurorae, the displays of light that appear in the upper atmosphere at high latitudes.

SWAS, the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite, is expected to launch in early 1999 aboard a Pegasus XL. SWAS will, for the first time by direct observation, measure the amount of water and molecular oxygen in interstellar clouds. SWAS will also measure carbon monoxide and atomic carbon, which are believed to be major reservoirs of carbon in these clouds.

Mission Set Two

TRACE, the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer, is well into integration and test. The spacecraft and instrument have been mated and comprehensive performance testing completed. It is now beginning environmental qualification. It is scheduled for launch in late 1997. TRACE will observe the Sun to study the connection between its magnetic fields and the heating of the Sun's corona.

WIRE, the Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, is beginning to complete subsystem component assembly and qualification. The composite primary spacecraft structure has completed vibration testing. The instrument cryostat is nearing completion. WIRE is scheduled for launch in the fall of 1998. WIRE will use a cryogenically-cooled telescope and arrays of highly sensitive infrared detectors for the study of galaxy evolution.

The SMEX Mission Comparison Matrix compares FAST, SWAS, TRACE, and WIRE.

Mission Set Three
The SMEX Announcement of Opportunity was released on April 14, 1997.

Looking Towards the Future
New Technologies

SMEX-Lite, the SMEX Project's latest development, is a completely new system architecture and development process that is intended to provide ultra-low-cost small spacecraft with performance that exceeds that accomplished with the initial five SMEX Missions. This initiative captializes on our past experiences, leverages and initiates technology development programs, and shrinks the institutional infrastructure in a manner that promises to cut the cost of SMEX-class spacecraft in half while improving system reliability.

Mission definition, development, and launch of the the Small Explorers are managed by the Small Explorer (SMEX) Project Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC.

The Explorer Program is a long-standing NASA program for launching small and moderate-sized space science mission payloads. Over 76 U.S. and cooperative-international scientific space missions have been part of the Explorer Program. For example, the International Ultraviolet Explorer, which produced astronomical data for more than 1,400 articles in scientific journals, continues to operate after more than 10 years in Earth orbit.

Author: Jim Watzin (jim.watzin@gsfc.nasa.gov)
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The last time this page was updated was 11/21/97.