Cosmic Ray Astrophysics
ACE - Advanced Composition Explorer
The Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) is an Explorer mission that was managed by the Office of Space Science Mission and Payload Development Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
Galileo
The Heavy Ion Counter was added to the Galileo spacecraft to monitor the environment for energetic heavy ions with the potential to cause single event upsets in the spacecraft electronics.
IMAX - Isotope Matter Antimatter Experiment
IMAX is a balloon-borne, superconducting magnet spectrometer experiment designed to measure the galactic cosmic ray abundances of protons, antiprotons, deuterium, helium-3, and helium-4 in the energy range from ~0.2 to ~3.2 GeV/nucleon. It is a collaboration between NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Caltech Space Radiation Lab, the University of Siegen, New Mexico State University, and the Danish Space Research Institute.
IMP-8
Associated with IMP-8 (IMP-J) whichwas launched by NASA on October 26, 1973 to measure the magnetic fields, plasmas, and energetic charged particles (e.g., cosmic rays) of the Earth's magnetotail and magnetosheath and of the near-Earth solar wind.
ISOMAX - Isotope Magnet Experiment
The experimental goal of the ISOMAX experiment are measurements of light isotopes, especially the Be10/Be9 ratio, up to an energy of some GeV/n.
SAMPEX - The Solar, Anomalous, Magnetospheric Particle Explorer
SAMPEX, the first of NASA's new Small Explorer (SMEX) series, was launched July 1, 1992 into an 82 deg inclination orbit carrying four instruments designed to measure energetic nuclei and electrons over a broad dynamic range.
STEREO/IMPACT
A suite of seven instruments that will sample the 3-D distribution of solar wind plasma electrons, the characteristics of the solar energetic particle (SEP) ions and electrons, and the local vector magnetic field. IMPACT will be one of the STEREO mission's four measurement packages whose principal objective is to understand the origin and consequences of coronal mass ejections (CME's).
TIGER - Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder
The Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) is a balloon borne instrument designed to measure the elemental abundances of Galactic Cosmic Rays. Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCRs) are energetic atomic nuclei that originate from outside our solar system and are believed to be accelerated by exploding stars (supernova) to extremely high energies. These nuclei have been detected and measured at earth by a variety of ground, balloon-borne and space experiments.
UHIC - Ultra-Heavy Interactions Collaboration
UHIC is a collaboration of groups at Caltech, Washington University, and the University of Minnesota. We investigate charge-changing peripheral collisions of ultra-heavy nuclei (Z > 40) at ~ 1 - 10 GeV/nucleon with targets of a variety of masses from H (Z = 1) to Pb (Z = 92).
Voyager
Both Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 were launched in 1977. Both space craft are now traveling out of the Solar System.