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114-537: The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( WMAP ), originally known as the Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( MAP and Explorer 80 ), was a NASA spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences across the sky in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) – the radiant heat remaining from the Big Bang . Headed by Professor Charles L. Bennett of Johns Hopkins University ,

228-418: A 2-GHz transponder providing a 667 kbit/s downlink to a 70 m (230 ft) Deep Space Network station. The spacecraft has two transponders, one a redundant backup; they are minimally active – about 40 minutes daily – to minimize radio frequency interference . The telescope's position is maintained, in its three axes, with three reaction wheels , gyroscopes , two star trackers and Sun sensors , and

342-579: A 3.5° x 3.5° field of view (FoV). The WMAP observed in five frequencies, permitting the measurement and subtraction of foreground contamination (from the Milky Way and extra-galactic sources) of the CMB. The main emission mechanisms are synchrotron radiation and free-free emission (dominating the lower frequencies), and astrophysical dust emissions (dominating the higher frequencies). The spectral properties of these emissions contribute different amounts to

456-402: A better characterization of the instrument, most notably of the beam shapes. They also make use of the 33-GHz observations for estimating cosmological parameters; previously only the 41-GHz and 61-GHz channels had been used. Improved masks were used to remove foregrounds. Improvements to the spectra were in the 3rd acoustic peak, and the polarization spectra. The measurements put constraints on

570-628: A decade of reliance on the Russians. In 2019, NASA announced the Artemis program , intending to return to the Moon and establish a permanent human presence. This was paired with the Artemis Accords with partner nations to establish rules of behavior and norms of space commercialization on the Moon. In 2023, NASA established the Moon to Mars Program office. The office is designed to oversee

684-469: A member of the mission's science team. After nine years of operations, WMAP was switched off in 2010, following the launch of the more advanced Planck spacecraft by European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009. WMAP's measurements played a key role in establishing the current Standard Model of Cosmology: the Lambda-CDM model . The WMAP data are very well fit by a universe that is dominated by dark energy in

798-647: A month after the Soviet Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space, executing a full orbital spaceflight. NASA's first orbital spaceflight was conducted by John Glenn on February 20, 1962, in the Friendship 7 , making three full orbits before reentering. Glenn had to fly parts of his final two orbits manually due to an autopilot malfunction. The sixth and final Mercury mission was flown by Gordon Cooper in May 1963, performing 22 orbits over 34 hours in

912-583: A permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade. In 1985, NASA proposed the Space Station Freedom , which both the agency and President Reagan intended to be an international program. While this would add legitimacy to the program, there were concerns within NASA that the international component would dilute its authority within the project, having never been willing to work with domestic or international partners as true equals. There

1026-593: A possible source of antimatter at the center of the Milky Way and observing that the majority of gamma-ray bursts occur outside of the Milky Way galaxy. The Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched from the Columbia on STS-93 in 1999, observing black holes, quasars , supernova , and dark matter . It provided critical observations on the Sagittarius A* black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy and

1140-426: A snapshot of the universe around 375,000 years after the Big Bang , which happened about 13.8 billion years ago. The microwave background is very homogeneous in temperature (the relative variations from the mean, which presently is still 2.7 kelvins, are only of the order of 5 × 10 ). The temperature variations corresponding to the local directions are presented through different colors (the "red" directions are hotter,

1254-540: A space station since the agency was created. In 1973, following the end of the Apollo lunar missions, NASA launched its first space station, Skylab , on the final launch of the Saturn   V. Skylab reused a significant amount of Apollo and Saturn hardware, with a repurposed Saturn   V third stage serving as the primary module for the space station. Damage to Skylab during its launch required spacewalks to be performed by

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1368-487: Is a heliocentric orbit in which a propulsive maneuver is used to set a spacecraft on a trajectory , also known as Mars transfer orbit , which will place it as far as Mars orbit. Every two years, low-energy transfer windows open up, which allow movement between the two planets with the lowest possible energy requirements. Transfer injections can place spacecraft into either a Hohmann transfer orbit or bi-elliptic transfer orbit. Trans-Mars injections can be either

1482-721: Is steered with eight hydrazine thrusters. The WMAP spacecraft arrived at the Kennedy Space Center on 20 April 2001. After being tested for two months, it was launched via Delta II 7425 launch vehicle on 30 June 2001. It began operating on its internal power five minutes before its launching, and continued so operating until the solar panel array deployed. The WMAP was activated and monitored while it cooled. On 2 July 2001, it began working, first with in-flight testing (from launching until 17 August 2001), then began constant, formal work. Afterwards, it effected three Earth-Moon phase loops, measuring its sidelobes , then flew by

1596-590: The Faith 7 . The Mercury Program was wildly recognized as a resounding success, achieving its objectives to orbit a human in space, develop tracking and control systems, and identify other issues associated with human spaceflight. While much of NASA's attention turned to space, it did not put aside its aeronautics mission. Early aeronautics research attempted to build upon the X-1's supersonic flight to build an aircraft capable of hypersonic flight . The North American X-15

1710-492: The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey and Lyman alpha forest measurements. There are degenerations among the parameters, the most significant is between n s {\displaystyle n_{s}} and τ {\displaystyle \tau } ; the errors given are at 68% confidence. Using the best-fit data and theoretical models, the WMAP team determined the times of important universal events, including

1824-617: The 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey , the Supernova Legacy Survey and constraints on the Hubble constant from the Hubble Space Telescope . [a] ^ Optical depth to reionization improved due to polarization measurements. [b] ^ <0.30 when combined with SDSS data. No indication of non-gaussianity. The five-year WMAP data were released on 28 February 2008. The data included new evidence for

1938-756: The Army Ballistic Missile Agency would launch Explorer 1 , America's first satellite, on February 1, 1958. The Eisenhower Administration decided to split the United States' military and civil spaceflight programs, which were organized together under the Defense Department 's Advanced Research Projects Agency . NASA was established on July 29, 1958, with the signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act and it began operations on October 1, 1958. As

2052-803: The Bell X-1 in a joint program with the U.S. Air Force . NACA's interest in space grew out of its rocketry program at the Pilotless Aircraft Research Division. The Soviet Union's launch of Sputnik 1 ushered in the Space Age and kicked off the Space Race . Despite NACA's early rocketry program, the responsibility for launching the first American satellite fell to the Naval Research Laboratory 's Project Vanguard , whose operational issues ensured

2166-687: The Big Bang , through the James Webb Space Telescope , the four Great Observatories , and associated programs. The Launch Services Program oversees launch operations for its uncrewed launches . NASA traces its roots to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). Despite being the birthplace of aviation, by 1914 the United States recognized that it was far behind Europe in aviation capability. Determined to regain American leadership in aviation,

2280-415: The Big Bang . The main result of the mission is contained in the various oval maps of the CMB temperature differences. These oval images present the temperature distribution derived by the WMAP team from the observations by the telescope during the mission. Measured is the temperature obtained from a Planck's law interpretation of the microwave background. The oval map covers the whole sky. The results are

2394-622: The Big Bang . The James Webb Space Telescope , named after the NASA administrator who lead the Apollo program, is an infrared observatory launched in 2021. The James Webb Space Telescope is a direct successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, intended to observe the formation of the first galaxies. Other space telescopes include the Kepler space telescope , launched in 2009 to identify planets orbiting extrasolar stars that may be Terran and possibly harbor life. The first exoplanet that

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2508-981: The Commercial Crew Program , and oversees the development of the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System for the lunar Artemis program . NASA's science division is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System ; advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate 's Heliophysics Research Program; exploring bodies throughout the Solar System with advanced robotic spacecraft such as New Horizons and planetary rovers such as Perseverance ; and researching astrophysics topics, such as

2622-797: The Environmental Science Services Administration on a series of weather satellites and the agency launched its experimental Applications Technology Satellites into geosynchronous orbit. NASA's first dedicated Earth observation satellite, Landsat , was launched in 1972. This led to NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration jointly developing the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite and discovering Ozone depletion . NASA had been pursuing spaceplane development since

2736-691: The Europa and observed that the moon may hold ice or liquid water. A joint NASA- European Space Agency - Italian Space Agency mission, Cassini–Huygens , was sent to Saturn 's moon Titan , which, along with Mars and Europa, are the only celestial bodies in the Solar System suspected of being capable of harboring life. Cassini discovered three new moons of Saturn and the Huygens probe entered Titan's atmosphere. The mission discovered evidence of liquid hydrocarbon lakes on Titan and subsurface water oceans on

2850-784: The Johnson Space Center as the lead center for the design, development, and manufacturing of the Space Shuttle orbiter , while the Marshall Space Flight Center would lead the development of the launch system. NASA's series of lifting body aircraft, culminating in the joint NASA-U.S. Air Force Martin Marietta X-24 , directly informed the development of the Space Shuttle and future hypersonic flight aircraft. Official development of

2964-664: The Mars Global Surveyor orbiter and Mars Pathfinder , deploying the first Mars rover, Sojourner . During the early 2000s, the 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter reached the planet and in 2004 the Sprit and Opportunity rovers landed on the Red Planet. This was followed in 2005 by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and 2007 Phoenix Mars lander. The 2012 landing of Curiosity discovered that

3078-614: The Orbiting Geophysical Observatory in the 1960s and 1970s to look down at Earth and observe its interactions with the Sun. The Uhuru satellite was the first dedicated x-ray telescope, mapping 85% of the sky and discovering a large number of black holes . Launched in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Great Observatories program are among NASA's most powerful telescopes. The Hubble Space Telescope

3192-658: The STS-1 mission, designed to serve as a flight test for the new spaceplane. NASA intended for the Space Shuttle to replace expendable launch systems like the Air Force's Atlas , Delta , and Titan and the European Space Agency 's Ariane . The Space Shuttle's Spacelab payload, developed by the European Space Agency, increased the scientific capabilities of shuttle missions over anything NASA

3306-635: The STS-60 mission in 1994 and the Discovery rendezvoused, but did not dock with, the Russian Mir in the STS-63 mission. This was followed by Atlantis' STS-71 mission where it accomplished the initial intended mission for the Space Shuttle, docking with a space station and transferring supplies and personnel. The Shuttle- Mir program would continue until 1998, when a series of orbital accidents on

3420-477: The Space Race when the Soviet Union gave up its lunar ambitions. As the first human to step on the surface of the Moon, Neil Armstrong uttered the now famous words: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. NASA would conduct six total lunar landings as part of the Apollo program, with Apollo   17 concluding the program in 1972. Wernher von Braun had advocated for NASA to develop

3534-620: The Space Shuttle began in 1972, with Rockwell International contracted to design the orbiter and engines, Martin Marietta for the external fuel tank , and Morton Thiokol for the solid rocket boosters . NASA acquired six orbiters: the Enterprise , Columbia , Challenger , Discovery , Atlantis , and Endeavour The Space Shuttle program also allowed NASA to make major changes to its Astronaut Corps . While almost all previous astronauts were Air Force or Naval test pilots,

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3648-620: The United States Congress created the Aviation Section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1914 and established NACA in 1915 to foster aeronautical research and development. Over the next forty years, NACA would conduct aeronautical research in support of the U.S. Air Force , U.S. Army , U.S. Navy , and the civil aviation sector. After the end of World War II , NACA became interested in the possibilities of guided missiles and supersonic aircraft, developing and testing

3762-400: The cosmic neutrino background , evidence that it took over half billion years for the first stars to reionize the universe, and new constraints on cosmic inflation . The improvement in the results came from both having an extra two years of measurements (the data set runs between midnight on 10 August 2001 to midnight of 9 August 2006), as well as using improved data processing techniques and

3876-405: The inner planets . Despite these successes, Congress was unwilling to fund further interplanetary missions and NASA Administrator James Webb suspended all future interplanetary probes to focus resources on the Apollo program. Following the conclusion of the Apollo program, NASA resumed launching interplanetary probes and expanded its space science program. The first planet tagged for exploration

3990-460: The low-noise amplifiers . The telescope consumes 419 W of power. The available telescope heaters are emergency-survival heaters, and there is a transmitter heater, used to warm them when off. The WMAP spacecraft's temperature is monitored with platinum resistance thermometers . The WMAP's calibration is effected with the CMB dipole and measurements of Jupiter ; the beam patterns are measured against Jupiter. The telescope's data are relayed daily via

4104-472: The "blue" directions cooler than the average). The original timeline for WMAP gave it two years of observations; these were completed by September 2003. Mission extensions were granted in 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 giving the spacecraft a total of 9 observing years, which ended August 2010 and in October 2010 the spacecraft was moved to a heliocentric "graveyard" orbit . The Planck spacecraft also measured

4218-524: The 1960s, blending the administration's dual aeronautics and space missions. NASA viewed a spaceplane as part of a larger program, providing routine and economical logistical support to a space station in Earth orbit that would be used as a hub for lunar and Mars missions. A reusable launch vehicle would then have ended the need for expensive and expendable boosters like the Saturn V . In 1969, NASA designated

4332-679: The 44 commercial companies that contracted with NASA to deploy their satellites to return to expendable launch vehicles. When the Space Shuttle returned to flight with the STS-26 mission, it had undergone significant modifications to improve its reliability and safety. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation and United States initiated the Shuttle- Mir program . The first Russian cosmonaut flew on

4446-630: The Air Force as the military space lead. Plans for human spaceflight began in the U.S. Armed Forces prior to NASA's creation. The Air Force's Man in Space Soonest project formed in 1956, coupled with the Army's Project Adam, served as the foundation for Project Mercury . NASA established the Space Task Group to manage the program, which would conduct crewed sub-orbital flights with the Army's Redstone rockets and orbital flights with

4560-501: The Air Force's Atlas launch vehicles. While NASA intended for its first astronauts to be civilians, President Eisenhower directed that they be selected from the military. The Mercury 7 astronauts included three Air Force pilots, three Navy aviators, and one Marine Corps pilot. On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard became the first American to enter space, performing a suborbital spaceflight in the Freedom 7 . This flight occurred less than

4674-410: The Apollo program. Despite attacks on the goal of landing astronauts on the Moon from the former president Dwight Eisenhower and 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater , President Kennedy was able to protect NASA's growing budget, of which 50% went directly to human spaceflight and it was later estimated that, at its height, 5% of Americans worked on some aspect of the Apollo program. Mirroring

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4788-685: The Army Ballistic Missile Agency's original Saturn   I . The Apollo spacecraft was designed and built by North American Aviation , while the Apollo Lunar Module was designed and built by Grumman . To develop the spaceflight skills and equipment required for a lunar mission, NASA initiated Project Gemini . Using a modified Air Force Titan   II launch vehicle, the Gemini capsule could hold two astronauts for flights of over two weeks. Gemini pioneered

4902-614: The CMB from 2009 to 2013 and aims to refine the measurements made by WMAP, both in total intensity and polarization. Various ground- and balloon-based instruments have also made CMB contributions, and others are being constructed to do so. Many are aimed at searching for the B-mode polarization expected from the simplest models of inflation, including The E and B Experiment (EBEX), Spider , BICEP and Keck Array (BICEP2), Keck , QUIET , Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS), South Pole Telescope (SPTpol) and others. On 21 March 2013,

5016-487: The CMB, with a 13 arcminutes resolution via multi-frequency observation. The map required the fewest systematic errors , no correlated pixel noise, and accurate calibration, to ensure angular-scale accuracy greater than its resolution. The map contains 3,145,728 pixels, and uses the HEALPix scheme to pixelize the sphere. The telescope also measured the CMB's E-mode polarization, and foreground polarization. Its service life

5130-485: The Department of Defense's program management concept using redundant systems in building the first intercontinental ballistic missiles, NASA requested the Air Force assign Major General Samuel C. Phillips to the space agency where he would serve as the director of the Apollo program. Development of the Saturn   V rocket was led by Wernher von Braun and his team at the Marshall Space Flight Center , derived from

5244-522: The European-led research team behind the Planck spacecraft released the mission's all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background. The map suggests the universe is slightly older than previously thought. According to the map, subtle fluctuations in temperature were imprinted on the deep sky when the cosmos was about 370,000 years old. The imprint reflects ripples that arose as early, in the existence of

5358-454: The Hubble constant is 67.74 ± 0.46 (km/s)/Mpc . NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration ( NASA / ˈ n æ s ə / ) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the civil space program , aeronautics research, and space research. Established in 1958 , it succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) to give

5472-574: The Keplar space telescope confirmed was Kepler-22b , orbiting within the habitable zone of its star. NASA also launched a number of different satellites to study Earth, such as Television Infrared Observation Satellite (TIROS) in 1960, which was the first weather satellite. NASA and the United States Weather Bureau cooperated on future TIROS and the second generation Nimbus program of weather satellites. It also worked with

5586-558: The Martian interior. The 2021 Perseverance rover carried the first extraplanetary aircraft, a helicopter named Ingenuity . NASA also launched missions to Mercury in 2004, with the MESSENGER probe demonstrating as the first use of a solar sail . NASA also launched probes to the outer Solar System starting in the 1960s. Pioneer 10 was the first probe to the outer planets, flying by Jupiter , while Pioneer 11 provided

5700-402: The Moon and going to Mars. Embracing this approach, NASA's Commercial Crew Program started by contracting cargo delivery to the International Space Station and flew its first operational contracted mission on SpaceX Crew-1 . This marked the first time since the retirement of the Space Shuttle that NASA was able to launch its own astronauts on an American spacecraft from the United States, ending

5814-404: The Moon and returning him safely to Earth by the end of the 1960s and installed James E. Webb as NASA administrator to achieve this goal. On May   25, 1961, President Kennedy openly declared this goal in his "Urgent National Needs" speech to the United States Congress, declaring: I believe this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on

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5928-427: The Moon and returning him safely to Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. Kennedy gave his " We choose to go to the Moon " speech the next year, on September   12, 1962 at Rice University , where he addressed the nation hoping to reinforce public support for

6042-412: The Moon on 30 July 2001, en route to the Sun-Earth L 2 Lagrange point , arriving there on 1 October 2001, becoming the first CMB observation mission posted there. Locating the spacecraft at Lagrange 2 , (1,500,000 km (930,000 mi) from Earth) thermally stabilizes it and minimizes the contaminating solar, terrestrial, and lunar emissions registered. To view the entire sky, without looking to

6156-409: The Russians be included. In 1993, the Clinton Administration announced that the Space Station Freedom would become the International Space Station in an agreement with the Russian Federation. This allowed the Russians to maintain their space program through an infusion of American currency to maintain their status as one of the two premier space programs. While the United States built and launched

6270-507: The Russians to fly to the International Space Station for four days, despite the opposition of NASA to the idea. Advocates of this new commercial approach for NASA included former astronaut Buzz Aldrin , who remarked that it would return NASA to its roots as a research and development agency, with commercial entities actually operating the space systems. Having corporations take over orbital operations would also allow NASA to focus all its efforts on deep space exploration and returning humans to

6384-422: The Solar System. Mars has long been a planet of intense fascination for NASA, being suspected of potentially having harbored life. Mariner 5 was the first NASA spacecraft to flyby Mars, followed by Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 . Mariner 9 was the first orbital mission to Mars. Launched in 1975, Viking program consisted of two landings on Mars in 1976. Follow-on missions would not be launched until 1996, with

6498-404: The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, NASA was forced to rely on Russian Soyuz launches for its astronauts and the 2011 retirement of the Space Shuttle accelerated the station's completion. In the 1980s, right after the first flight of the Space Shuttle, NASA started a joint program with the Department of Defense to develop the Rockwell X-30 National Aerospace Plane. NASA realized that

6612-418: The Space Shuttle allowed NASA to begin recruiting more non-military scientific and technical experts. A prime example is Sally Ride , who became the first American woman to fly in space on STS-7 . This new astronaut selection process also allowed NASA to accept exchange astronauts from U.S. allies and partners for the first time. The first Space Shuttle flight occurred in 1981, when the Columbia launched on

6726-443: The Space Shuttle and expand space exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Constellation was intended to use a significant amount of former Space Shuttle equipment and return astronauts to the Moon. This program was canceled by the Obama Administration . Former astronauts Neil Armstrong , Gene Cernan , and Jim Lovell sent a letter to President Barack Obama to warn him that if the United States did not get new human spaceflight ability,

6840-478: The Space Shuttle began flying, selling it as an orbital laboratory, repair station, and a jumping off point for lunar and Mars missions. NASA found a strong advocate in President Ronald Reagan , who declared in a 1984 speech: America has always been greatest when we dared to be great. We can reach for greatness again. We can follow our dreams to distant stars, living and working in space for peaceful, economic, and scientific gain. Tonight I am directing NASA to develop

6954-444: The Space Shuttle, while a massive technological accomplishment, would not be able to live up to all its promises. Designed to be a single-stage-to-orbit spaceplane, the X-30 had both civil and military applications. With the end of the Cold War , the X-30 was canceled in 1992 before reaching flight status. Following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, President Bush started the Constellation program to smoothly replace

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7068-483: The Space Shuttle. Due to technical challenges, the spacecraft was cancelled in 2001. Despite this, it was the first time a commercial space company directly expended a significant amount of its resources into spacecraft development. The advent of space tourism also forced NASA to challenge its assumption that only governments would have people in space. The first space tourist was Dennis Tito , an American investment manager and former aerospace engineer who contracted with

7182-507: The Space Station Freedom was controversial, with much of the debate centering on cost. Several redesigns to reduce cost were conducted in the early 1990s, stripping away much of its functions. Despite calls for Congress to terminate the program, it continued, in large part because by 1992 it had created 75,000 jobs across 39 states. By 1993, President Bill Clinton attempted to significantly reduce NASA's budget and directed costs be significantly reduced, aerospace industry jobs were not lost, and

7296-670: The Sun, the WMAP traces a path around L 2 in a Lissajous orbit ca. 1.0° to 10°, with a 6-month period. The telescope rotates once every 2 minutes 9 seconds (0.464 rpm ) and precesses at the rate of 1 revolution per hour. WMAP measured the entire sky every six months, and completed its first, full-sky observation in April 2002. The WMAP instrument consists of pseudo-correlation differential radiometers fed by two back-to-back 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) primary Gregorian reflectors. This instrument uses five frequency bands from 22 GHz to 90 GHz to facilitate rejection of foreground signals from our own Galaxy. The WMAP instrument has

7410-399: The U.S. risked become a second or third-rate space power. As early as the Reagan Administration, there had been calls for NASA to expand private sector involvement in space exploration rather than do it all in-house. In the 1990s, NASA and Lockheed Martin entered into an agreement to develop the Lockheed Martin X-33 demonstrator of the VentureStar spaceplane, which was intended to replace

7524-409: The U.S. space development effort a distinct civilian orientation, emphasizing peaceful applications in space science . It has since led most of America's space exploration programs, including Project Mercury , Project Gemini , the 1968–1972 Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle . Currently, NASA supports the International Space Station (ISS) along with

7638-409: The US's premier aeronautics agency, NACA formed the core of NASA's new structure by reassigning 8,000 employees and three major research laboratories. NASA also proceeded to absorb the Naval Research Laboratory's Project Vanguard, the Army's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency under Wernher von Braun . This left NASA firmly as the United States' civil space lead and

7752-399: The WMAP skymap is the result of a Mollweide projection . The data puts limits on the value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r <0.22 (95% certainty), which determines the level at which gravitational waves affect the polarization of the CMB, and also puts limits on the amount of primordial non-gaussianity . Improved constraints were put on the redshift of reionization, which is 10.9 ± 1.4 ,

7866-400: The array sit a bottom deck (supporting the warm components) and a top deck. The telescope's cold components: the focal-plane array and the mirrors, are separated from the warm components with a cylindrical, 33 cm (13 in)-long thermal isolation shell atop the deck. Passive thermal radiators cool the WMAP to approximately 90 K (−183.2 °C; −297.7 °F); they are connected to

7980-501: The content of the universe at the time that the CMB was emitted; at the time 10% of the universe was made up of neutrinos, 12% of atoms, 15% of photons and 63% dark matter. The contribution of dark energy at the time was negligible. It also constrained the content of the present-day universe; 4.6% atoms, 23% dark matter and 72% dark energy. The WMAP five-year data was combined with measurements from Type Ia supernova (SNe) and Baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). The elliptical shape of

8094-408: The data are more statistically significant, and research continues into these. The WMAP objective was to measure the temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation . The anisotropies then were used to measure the universe's geometry, content, and evolution ; and to test the Big Bang model, and the cosmic inflation theory. For that, the mission created a full-sky map of

8208-526: The detection of exoplanets by way of the radial-velocity method . The helio- prefix is derived from the Greek word "ἥλιος", meaning "Sun", and also Helios , the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology . The first spacecraft to be put in a heliocentric orbit was Luna 1 in 1959. An incorrectly timed upper-stage burn caused it to miss its planned impact on the Moon . A trans-Mars injection (TMI)

8322-496: The difference between two telescope beams. The signal is amplified with High-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) low-noise amplifiers , built by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). There are 20 feeds, 10 in each direction, from which a radiometer collects a signal; the measure is the difference in the sky signal from opposite directions. The directional separation azimuth is 180°;

8436-582: The ecliptic pole). It seems most likely these are due to other effects, with the report mentioning uncertainties in the precise beam shape and other possible small remaining instrumental and analysis issues. The other confirmation of major significance is of the total amount of matter/energy in the universe in the form of dark energy – 72.8% (within 1.6%) as non 'particle' background, and dark matter – 22.7% (within 1.4%) of non baryonic (sub-atomic) 'particle' energy. This leaves matter, or baryonic particles (atoms) at only 4.56% (within 0.16%). On 29 December 2012,

8550-420: The first close up view of the planet. Both probes became the first objects to leave the Solar System. The Voyager program launched in 1977, conducting flybys of Jupiter and Saturn , Neptune , and Uranus on a trajectory to leave the Solar System. The Galileo spacecraft, deployed from the Space Shuttle flight STS-34 , was the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter, discovering evidence of subsurface oceans on

8664-515: The first crew to make it habitable and operational. Skylab hosted nine missions and was decommissioned in 1974 and deorbited in 1979, two years prior to the first launch of the Space Shuttle and any possibility of boosting its orbit. In 1975, the Apollo–Soyuz mission was the first ever international spaceflight and a major diplomatic accomplishment between the Cold War rivals, which also marked

8778-402: The first humans to see the Earth as a globe in space, the first to witness an Earthrise , and the first to see and manually photograph the far side of the Moon. The first lunar landing was conducted by Apollo   11. Commanded by Neil Armstrong with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins , Apollo   11 was one of the most significant missions in NASA's history, marking the end of

8892-428: The first time in 2008, that the data prefer the existence of a cosmic neutrino background with an effective number of neutrino species of 3.26 ± 0.35 . The contents point to a Euclidean flat geometry , with curvature ( Ω k {\displaystyle \Omega _{k}} ) of −0.0027 +0.0039 −0.0038 . The WMAP measurements also support the cosmic inflation paradigm in several ways, including

9006-423: The five frequencies, thus permitting their identification and subtraction. Foreground contamination is removed in several ways. First, subtract extant emission maps from the WMAP's measurements; second, use the components' known spectral values to identify them; third, simultaneously fit the position and spectra data of the foreground emission, using extra data sets. Foreground contamination was reduced by using only

9120-717: The flatness measurement. The mission has won various awards: according to Science magazine, the WMAP was the Breakthrough of the Year for 2003 . This mission's results papers were first and second in the "Super Hot Papers in Science Since 2003" list. Of the all-time most referenced papers in physics and astronomy in the INSPIRE-HEP database, only three have been published since 2000, and all three are WMAP publications. Bennett, Lyman A. Page Jr. , and David N. Spergel,

9234-546: The form of a cosmological constant . Other cosmological data are also consistent, and together tightly constrain the Model. In the Lambda-CDM model of the universe, the age of the universe is 13.772 ± 0.059 billion years. The WMAP mission's determination of the age of the universe is to better than 1% precision. The current expansion rate of the universe is (see Hubble constant ) 69.32 ± 0.80 km·s·Mpc . The content of

9348-422: The full-sky map portions with the least foreground contamination, while masking the remaining map portions. On 11 February 2003, NASA published the first-year's worth of WMAP data. The latest calculated age and composition of the early universe were presented. In addition, an image of the early universe, that "contains such stunning detail, that it may be one of the most important scientific results of recent years"

9462-451: The last flight of the Apollo capsule. Flown in 1975, a U.S. Apollo spacecraft docked with a Soviet Soyuz capsule. During the 1960s, NASA started its space science and interplanetary probe program. The Mariner program was its flagship program, launching probes to Venus , Mars , and Mercury in the 1960s. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was the lead NASA center for robotic interplanetary exploration, making significant discoveries about

9576-576: The latter both of Princeton University, shared the 2010 Shaw Prize in astronomy for their work on WMAP. Bennett and the WMAP science team were awarded the 2012 Gruber Prize in cosmology. The 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics was awarded to Bennett, Gary Hinshaw, Norman Jarosik, Page, Spergel, and the WMAP science team. In October 2010, the WMAP spacecraft was derelict in a heliocentric graveyard orbit after completing nine years of operations. All WMAP data are released to

9690-515: The majority of the International Space Station, Russia, Canada, Japan, and the European Space Agency all contributed components. Despite NASA's insistence that costs would be kept at a budget of $ 17.4, they kept rising and NASA had to transfer funds from other programs to keep the International Space Station solvent. Ultimately, the total cost of the station was $ 150 billion, with the United States paying for two-thirds.Following

9804-627: The mission was developed in a joint partnership between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University . The WMAP spacecraft was launched on 30 June 2001 from Florida . The WMAP mission succeeded the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft in the NASA Explorer program . In 2003, MAP was renamed WMAP in honor of cosmologist David Todd Wilkinson (1935–2002), who had been

9918-634: The moon of Enceladus , which could harbor life. Finally launched in 2006, the New Horizons mission was the first spacecraft to visit Pluto and the Kuiper Belt . Beyond interplanetary probes, NASA has launched many space telescopes . Launched in the 1960s, the Orbiting Astronomical Observatory were NASA's first orbital telescopes, providing ultraviolet, gamma-ray, x-ray, and infrared observations. NASA launched

10032-432: The nine-year WMAP data and related images were released. 13.772 ± 0.059 billion-year-old temperature fluctuations and a temperature range of ± 200 micro kelvins are shown in the image. In addition, the study found that 95% of the early universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy , the curvature of space is less than 0.4% of "flat" and the universe emerged from the cosmic Dark Ages "about 400 million years" after

10146-493: The public and have been subject to careful scrutiny. The final official data release was the nine-year release in 2012. Some aspects of the data are statistically unusual for the Standard Model of Cosmology. For example, the largest angular-scale measurement, the quadrupole moment , is somewhat smaller than the Model would predict, but this discrepancy is not highly significant. A large cold spot and other features of

10260-650: The radiation levels on Mars were equal to those on the International Space Station , greatly increasing the possibility of Human exploration, and observed the key chemical ingredients for life to occur. In 2013, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution ( MAVEN ) mission observed the Martian upper atmosphere and space environment and in 2018, the Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations Geodesy, and Heat Transport ( InSight ) studied

10374-416: The ratio of baryons to photons, 6.1 +0.3 −0.2 × 10 . The WMAP's detection of an early reionization excluded warm dark matter . The team also examined Milky Way emissions at the WMAP frequencies, producing a 208- point source catalogue. The three-year WMAP data were released on 17 March 2006. The data included temperature and polarization measurements of the CMB, which provided further confirmation of

10488-461: The redshift of decoupling , 1 090 .88 ± 0.72 (as well as age of universe at decoupling, 376.971 +3.162 −3.167  kyr ) and the redshift of matter/radiation equality, 3253 +89 −87 . The extragalactic source catalogue was expanded to include 390 sources, and variability was detected in the emission from Mars and Saturn . The seven-year WMAP data were released on 26 January 2010. As part of this release, claims for inconsistencies with

10602-423: The redshift of reionization , 17 ± 4 ; the redshift of decoupling , 1089 ± 1 (and the universe's age at decoupling, 379 +8 −7  kyr ); and the redshift of matter/radiation equality, 3233 +194 −210 . They determined the thickness of the surface of last scattering to be 195 ± 2 in redshift, or 118 +3 −2  kyr . They determined the current density of baryons , (2.5 ± 0.1) × 10 cm , and

10716-507: The satellites were repaired and relaunched. Despite ushering in a new era of spaceflight, where NASA was contracting launch services to commercial companies, the Space Shuttle was criticized for not being as reusable and cost-effective as advertised. In 1986, Challenger disaster on the STS-51L mission resulted in the loss of the spacecraft and all seven astronauts on launch, grounding the entire space shuttle fleet for 36 months and forced

10830-676: The separation of dark and regular matter during galactic collisions. Finally, the Spitzer Space Telescope is an infrared telescope launched in 2003 from a Delta II rocket. It is in a trailing orbit around the Sun, following the Earth and discovered the existence of brown dwarf stars . Other telescopes, such as the Cosmic Background Explorer and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe , provided evidence to support

10944-510: The setback caused by the Apollo   1 fire, which killed three astronauts, the program proceeded. Apollo   8 was the first crewed spacecraft to leave low Earth orbit and the first human spaceflight to reach the Moon . The crew orbited the Moon ten times on December   24 and   25, 1968, and then traveled safely back to Earth . The three Apollo   8 astronauts— Frank Borman , James Lovell , and William Anders —were

11058-496: The signal onto a pair of 0.9 × 1.0 m (2 ft 11 in × 3 ft 3 in) secondary reflecting mirrors. They are shaped for optimal performance: a carbon fibre shell upon a Korex core, thinly-coated with aluminium and silicon oxide . The secondary reflectors transmit the signals to the corrugated feedhorns that sit on a focal plane array box beneath the primary reflectors. The receivers are polarization -sensitive differential radiometers measuring

11172-475: The space shuttle be retired. In 2006, the Space Shuttle returned to flight, conducting several mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope , but was retired following the STS-135 resupply mission to the International Space Station in 2011. NASA never gave up on the idea of a space station after Skylab's reentry in 1979. The agency began lobbying politicians to support building a larger space station as soon as

11286-481: The space station spelled an end to the program. In 2003, a second space shuttle was destroyed when the Columbia was destroyed upon reentry during the STS-107 mission, resulting in the loss of the spacecraft and all seven astronauts. This accident marked the beginning of the retiring of the Space Shuttle program, with President George W. Bush directing that upon the completion of the International Space Station,

11400-449: The standard flat Lambda-CDM model and new evidence in support of inflation . The 3-year WMAP data alone shows that the universe must have dark matter . Results were computed both only using WMAP data, and also with a mix of parameter constraints from other instruments, including other CMB experiments ( Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR), Cosmic Background Imager (CBI) and BOOMERANG ), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS),

11514-452: The standard model were investigated. Most were shown not to be statistically significant, and likely due to a posteriori selection (where one sees a weird deviation, but fails to consider properly how hard one has been looking; a deviation with 1:1000 likelihood will typically be found if one tries one thousand times). For the deviations that do remain, there are no alternative cosmological ideas (for instance, there seem to be correlations with

11628-447: The total angle is 141°. To improve subtraction of foreground signals from our Milky Way galaxy, the WMAP used five discrete radio frequency bands, from 23 GHz to 94 GHz. The WMAP's base is a 5.0 m (16.4 ft)-diameter solar panel array that keeps the instruments in shadow during CMB observations, (by keeping the craft constantly angled at 22°, relative to the Sun ). Upon

11742-418: The universe currently consists of 4.628% ± 0.093% ordinary baryonic matter ; 24.02% +0.88% −0.87% cold dark matter (CDM) that neither emits nor absorbs light; and 71.35% +0.95% −0.96% of dark energy in the form of a cosmological constant that accelerates the expansion of the universe . Less than 1% of the current content of the universe is in neutrinos, but WMAP's measurements have found, for

11856-428: The universe, as the first nonillionth (10) of a second. Apparently, these ripples gave rise to the present vast cosmic web of galaxy clusters and dark matter . Based on the 2013 data, the universe contains 4.9% ordinary matter , 26.8% dark matter and 68.3% dark energy . On 5 February 2015, new data was released by the Planck mission, according to which the age of the universe is 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years and

11970-579: The use of fuel cells instead of batteries, and conducted the first American spacewalks and rendezvous operations . The Ranger Program was started in the 1950s as a response to Soviet lunar exploration, however most missions ended in failure. The Lunar Orbiter program had greater success, mapping the surface in preparation for Apollo landings and measured Selenography , conducted meteoroid detection, and measured radiation levels. The Surveyor program conducted uncrewed lunar landings and takeoffs, as well as taking surface and regolith observations. Despite

12084-417: The various projects, mission architectures and associated timelines relevant to lunar and Mars exploration and science. Heliocentric orbit The barycenter of the Solar System, while always very near the Sun, moves through space as time passes, depending on where other large bodies in the Solar System, such as Jupiter and other large gas planets , are located at that time. A similar phenomenon allows

12198-461: Was Venus , sharing many similar characteristics to Earth. First visited by American Mariner 2 spacecraft, Venus was observed to be a hot and inhospitable planet. Follow-on missions included the Pioneer Venus project in the 1970s and Magellan , which performed radar mapping of Venus' surface in the 1980s and 1990s. Future missions were flybys of Venus, on their way to other destinations in

12312-510: Was 27 months; 3 to reach the L 2 position, and 2 years of observation. The MAP mission was proposed to NASA in 1995, selected for definition study in 1996, and approved for development in 1997. The WMAP was preceded by two missions to observe the CMB; (i) the Soviet RELIKT-1 that reported the upper-limit measurements of CMB anisotropies, and (ii) the U.S. COBE satellite that first reported large-scale CMB fluctuations. The WMAP

12426-526: Was 45 times more sensitive, with 33 times the angular resolution of its COBE satellite predecessor. The successor European Planck mission (operational 2009–2013) had a higher resolution and higher sensitivity than WMAP and observed in 9 frequency bands rather than WMAP's 5, allowing improved astrophysical foreground models. The telescope's primary reflecting mirrors are a pair of Gregorian 1.4 × 1.6 m (4 ft 7 in × 5 ft 3 in) dishes (facing opposite directions), that focus

12540-489: Was a joint NASA–U.S. Air Force program, with the hypersonic test aircraft becoming the first non-dedicated spacecraft to cross from the atmosphere to outer space. The X-15 also served as a testbed for Apollo program technologies, as well as ramjet and scramjet propulsion. Escalations in the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union prompted President John F. Kennedy to charge NASA with landing an American on

12654-683: Was able to previously accomplish. NASA launched its first commercial satellites on the STS-5 mission and in 1984, the STS-41-C mission conducted the world's first on-orbit satellite servicing mission when the Challenger captured and repaired the malfunctioning Solar Maximum Mission satellite. It also had the capability to return malfunctioning satellite to Earth, like it did with the Palapa B2 and Westar 6 satellites. Once returned to Earth,

12768-545: Was also a concern with sharing sensitive space technologies with the Europeans, which had the potential to dilute America's technical lead. Ultimately, an international agreement to develop the Space Station Freedom program would be signed with thirteen countries in 1985, including the European Space Agency member states, Canada , and Japan . Despite its status as the first international space program,

12882-497: Was launched in 1990 on STS-31 from the Discovery and could view galaxies 15 billion light years away. A major defect in the telescope's mirror could have crippled the program, had NASA not used computer enhancement to compensate for the imperfection and launched five Space Shuttle servicing flights to replace the damaged components. The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory was launched from the Atlantis on STS-37 in 1991, discovering

12996-484: Was presented. The newly released data surpass previous CMB measurements. Based upon the Lambda-CDM model , the WMAP team produced cosmological parameters from the WMAP's first-year results. Three sets are given below; the first and second sets are WMAP data; the difference is the addition of spectral indices, predictions of some inflationary models. The third data set combines the WMAP constraints with those from other CMB experiments ( ACBAR and CBI ), and constraints from

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