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NASA Announces Two Science Missions
By Kenneth Silber
Staff Writer
posted: 06:10 pm ET
14 October 1999
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midexNASA announced two new missions Thursday. Both are under its Medium-Class Explorers (MIDEX) program -- an initiative aimed at deploying low-cost scientific spacecraft. The first mission, to be launched in 2003, is the Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer, an orbiting observatory that will study gamma ray explosions and survey the sky for black holes and other sources of gamma rays. Swift will carry three telescopes, operating respectively in gamma rays, X-rays and optical light. The second mission, to be launched in 2004, is the Full-sky Astrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME), an orbiting telescope designed to obtain precise position and brightness measurements of stars. The spacecraft's potential uses include discovering planetary systems around stars within 1,000 light years of the sun. The Swift mission will cost $163 million, and FAME will cost $162 million, according to NASA. The missions were selected from 31 proposals received in 1998. Two earlier MIDEX missions were selected in 1996 and are scheduled for launch in 2000. One, named Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE), will study the solar wind. The other, the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP), will measure the cosmic background radiation left over from the early universe.
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