The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, formerly called the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST), is a space observatory being used to perform gamma-ray astronomy observations from low Earth orbit. Its main instrument is the Large Area Telescope (LAT), with which astronomers mostly intend to perform an all-sky survey studying astrophysical and cosmological phenomena such as active galactic nuclei, pulsars, other high-energy sources and dark matter. Another instrument aboard Fermi, the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor, is being used to study gamma-ray bursts and solar flares.
The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) was a space observatory detecting photons with energies from 20 keV to 30 GeV, in Earth orbit from 1991 to 2000. The observatory featured four main telescopes in one spacecraft, covering X-rays and gamma rays, including various specialized sub-instruments and detectors. Following 14 years of effort, the observatory was launched from Space Shuttle Atlantis during STS-37 on April 5, 1991, and operated until its deorbit on June 4, 2000. It was deployed in low Earth orbit at 450 km (280 mi) to avoid the Van Allen radiation belt. It was the heaviest astrophysical payload ever flown at that time at 16,300 kilograms (35,900 lb).
NASA's series of Great Observatories satellites are four large, powerful space-based astronomical telescopes launched between 1990 and 2003. They were built with different technology to examine specific wavelength/energy regions of the electromagnetic spectrum: gamma rays, X-rays, visible and ultraviolet light, and infrared light.
A gamma-ray spectrometer (GRS) is an instrument for measuring the distribution of the intensity of gamma radiation versus the energy of each photon. The study and analysis of gamma-ray spectra for scientific and technical use is called gamma spectroscopy, and gamma-ray spectrometers are the instruments which observe and collect such data. Because the energy of each photon of EM radiation is proportional to its frequency, gamma rays have sufficient energy that they are typically observed by counting individual photons.
Reuven Ramaty (1937—2001) was a Hungarian astrophysicist who worked for 30 years at NASA's NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre. He was a leader in the fields of solar physics, gamma-ray line spectrometry, nuclear astrophysics, and low-energy cosmic rays. Ramaty was a founding member of NASA's High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager which has now been renamed the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager in his honour. This was the first space mission to be named after a NASA scientist and was operational from 2002 until 2018. The Online Archive of California holds over 400 entries for documents, papers and photographs published by and of Ramaty and his work. Ramaty made many contributions in the field of astrophysics and solar physics. He was given the Goddard Lindsay Award in 1980 and had a tribute dedicated to his work at the University of Maryland in 2000.
Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, previously called the Swift Gamma-Ray Burst Explorer, is a NASA three-telescope space observatory for studying gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and monitoring the afterglow in X-ray, and UV/Visible light at the location of a burst. It was launched on 20 November 2004, aboard a Delta II launch vehicle. Headed by principal investigator Neil Gehrels until his death in February 2017, the mission was developed in a joint partnership between Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and an international consortium from the United States, United Kingdom, and Italy. The mission is operated by Pennsylvania State University as part of NASA's Medium Explorer program (MIDEX).
Yohkoh, known before launch as Solar-A, was a Solar observatory spacecraft of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (Japan), in collaboration with space agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was launched into Earth orbit on August 30, 1991 by the M-3SII rocket from Kagoshima Space Center. It took its first soft X-ray image on 13 September 1991, 21:53:40, and movie representations of the X-ray corona over 1991-2001 are available at the Yohkoh Legacy site.
The INTErnational Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) is a space telescope for observing gamma rays of energies up to 8 MeV. It was launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) into Earth orbit in 2002, and is designed to provide imaging and spectroscopy of cosmic sources. In the MeV energy range, it is the most sensitive gamma ray observatory in space. It is sensitive to higher energy photons than X-ray instruments such as NuSTAR, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, XMM-Newton, and lower than other gamma-ray instruments such Fermi and HESS.
The Global Geospace Science (GGS) Wind satellite is a NASA science spacecraft designed to study radio waves and plasma that occur in the solar wind and in the Earth's magnetosphere. It was launched on 1 November 1994, at 09:31:00 UTC, from launch pad LC-17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Merritt Island, Florida, aboard a McDonnell Douglas Delta II 7925-10 rocket. Wind was designed and manufactured by Martin Marietta Astro Space Division in East Windsor Township, New Jersey. The satellite is a spin-stabilized cylindrical satellite with a diameter of 2.4 m and a height of 1.8 m.
An X-ray telescope (XRT) is a telescope that is designed to observe remote objects in the X-ray spectrum. X-rays are absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere, so instruments to detect X-rays must be taken to high altitude by balloons, sounding rockets, and satellites.
The InterPlanetary Network (IPN) is a group of spacecraft equipped with gamma ray burst (GRB) detectors. By timing the arrival of a burst at several spacecraft, its precise location can be found. The precision for determining the direction of a GRB in the sky is improved by increasing the spacing of the detectors, and also by more accurate timing of the reception. Typical spacecraft baselines of about one AU and time resolutions of tens of milliseconds can determine a burst location within several arcminutes, allowing follow-up observations with other telescopes.
AGILE was an X-ray and gamma ray astronomical satellite of the Italian Space Agency (ASI). Launched in 2007, it de-orbited in February 2024.
The International Astrophysical Observatory "GRANAT", was a Soviet space observatory developed in collaboration with France, Denmark and Bulgaria. It was launched on 1 December 1989 aboard a Proton rocket and placed in a highly eccentric four-day orbit, of which three were devoted to observations. It operated for almost nine years.
Gamma-ray astronomy is a subfield of astronomy where scientists observe and study celestial objects and phenomena in outer space which emit cosmic electromagnetic radiation in the form of gamma rays, i.e. photons with the highest energies at the very shortest wavelengths. Radiation below 100 keV is classified as X-rays and is the subject of X-ray astronomy.
Kenneth John Frost was a pioneer in the early space program, designing and flying instruments to detect and measure X-rays and gamma-rays in space, primarily from the Sun. He was the first to suggest the use of an active scintillation shield operated in electronic anticoincidence with the primary detector to reduce the background from cosmic ray interactions, an innovation that made sensitive hard X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy possible. He was an American astrophysicist at Goddard Space Flight Center working as a civil servant for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. During his career, he was the project scientist of the Solar Maximum Mission, principal investigator of six science instruments, the head of the Solar Physics Branch, and the associate director of Space Sciences.
The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe(IMAP) is a heliophysics mission that will simultaneously investigate two important and coupled science topics in the heliosphere: the acceleration of energetic particles and interaction of the solar wind with the local interstellar medium. These science topics are coupled because particles accelerated in the inner heliosphere play crucial roles in the outer heliospheric interaction. In 2018, NASA selected a team led by David J. McComas of Princeton University to implement the mission, which is currently scheduled to launch on 29 April 2025. IMAP will be a Sun-tracking spin-stabilized satellite in orbit about the Sun–Earth L1 Lagrange point with a science payload of ten instruments. IMAP will also continuously broadcast real-time in-situ data that can be used for space weather prediction.
Explorer 47, was a NASA satellite launched as part of the Explorers program. Explorer 47 was launched on 23 September 1972 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a Thor-Delta 1604. Explorer 47 was the ninth overall launch of the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform series, but received the launch designation "IMP-7" because two previous "Anchored IMP" flights had used "AIMP" instead.
Explorer 50, also known as IMP-J or IMP-8, was a NASA satellite launched to study the magnetosphere. It was the eighth and last in a series of the Interplanetary Monitoring Platform.
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) is a NASA SMEX astrophysics mission that will launch a soft gamma-ray telescope in 2027. It is a wide-field compact Compton telescope (CCT) that is uniquely suited to investigate the "MeV gap". It provides imaging, spectroscopy, and polarimetry of astrophysical sources, and its germanium detectors provide excellent energy resolution for emission line measurements.
Gordon Dean Holman is an emeritus research astrophysicist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA’s) Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. His research mostly focused on obtaining an understanding of high-energy radiation from astronomical objects. This radiation cannot be observed from Earth's surface, but is observed with instruments on satellites launched to orbits above Earth's atmosphere. It is primarily emitted by high-energy electrons interacting with ions. These electrons also emit radiation at radio frequencies which is observed from Earth's surface. Consequently, these observations from space and radio telescopes provide a view of hot gas and energetic particles in the Universe that could not otherwise be obtained. Holman has specialized in the interpretation of these observed emissions to determine the origin and evolution of this hot gas and energetic particles. He has been described as "not just a theorist, he also looks at the data".
