Astronomy:Small Explorer program
The Small Explorer program (SMEX) is an effort within NASA to fund space exploration missions that cost no more than US$120 million.[1] Extending the larger Explorers program, it was started in 1989.[2]
Program history
The first set of three SMEX missions were launched between 1992 and 1998. The second set of two missions were launched in 1998 and 1999. These missions were managed by the Small Explorer Project Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). In early 1999, that office was closed and with the announcement of opportunity for the third set of SMEX missions NASA converted the program so that each mission was managed by its Principal Investigator, with oversight by the GSFC Explorers Project.[3]
As of 2017, NASA is funding a competitive study of five candidate heliophysics Small Explorers missions, with the expectation that one finalist proposal will be selected as a mission for flight in 2022. The proposals are Mechanisms of Energetic Mass Ejection – eXplorer (MEME-X), Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI), Multi-Slit Solar Explorer (MUSE), Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS), and Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH).[4][5][6]
List of missions
| Name | SMEX number |
Explorer number |
Launch (UTC) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAMPEX | SMEX-1 | Explorer-68 | 3 July 1992 | Ended: 30 June 2004 Reentered: 13 November 2012 |
| TOMS-EP | 2 July 1996 | Single instrument: Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer 3.[7] | ||
| FAST | SMEX-2 | Explorer-70 | 21 August 1996 | Ended: 4 May 2009 |
| SWAS | SMEX-3 | Explorer-74 | 6 December 1998 | Ended: 21 July 2004 |
| TRACE | SMEX-4 | Explorer-73 | 2 April 1998 | Ended: 21 June 2010 |
| WIRE | SMEX-5 | Explorer-75 | 5 March 1999 | Spacecraft equipment failure Reentered: 10 May 2011 |
| RHESSI | SMEX-6 | Explorer-81 | 5 February 2002 | Operational |
| GALEX | SMEX-7 | Explorer-83 | 28 April 2003 | Ended: May 2012 Decommissioned: 28 June 2013 |
| SPIDR | SMEX-8 | Cancelled, instrument not sensitive as expected | ||
| AIM | SMEX-9 | Explorer-90 | 25 April 2007 | Operational |
| IBEX | SMEX-10 | Explorer-91 | 19 October 2008 | Operational |
| NuSTAR | SMEX-11 | Explorer-93 | 13 June 2012 | Operational |
| IRIS | SMEX-12 | Explorer-94 | 28 June 2013 | Operational |
| GEMS | SMEX-13 | Cancelled, expected cost overrun | ||
| IXPE | SMEX-14 | TBD | 2021[8] | In development |
See also
- Cosmic Vision S-class missions, the European Space Agency equivalent to the Small Explorer program
References
- ↑ "Explorers Missions". NASA. Archived from the original on 23 March 2010. https://web.archive.org/web/20100323182500/http://explorers.gsfc.nasa.gov/missions.html. Retrieved 28 August 2015.
- ↑ Mason, G. M.; Baker, D. N.; Blake, J. B.; Boughner, R. E.; Callis, L. B. (1998). "SAMPEX: NASA's First Small Explorer Satellite". IEEE Aerospace Conference. 21–28 March 1998. Aspen, Colorado.. 5. pp. 389–412. doi:10.1109/AERO.1998.685848.
- ↑ "Welcome to the Small Explorer's Web Site". NASA. 18 February 2000. Archived from the original on 17 August 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20000817054104/http://sunland.gsfc.nasa.gov/smex/.
- ↑ Brown, Dwayne (28 July 2017). "NASA Selects Proposals to Study Sun, Space Environment". NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-selects-proposals-to-study-sun-space-environment. Retrieved 7 December 2017.
- ↑ "Announcement of Opportunity: Heliophysics Explorers Program, 2016 Small Explorer (SMEX)". NASA. 13 July 2016. https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/viewrepositorydocument/cmdocumentid=524225/solicitationId=%7BA0C496AC-9B9D-8F7D-A506-B1695BF9BDE8%7D/viewSolicitationDocument=1/2016%20Helio%20SMEX%20AO_amend1_clarify.pdf.
- ↑ Mendoza-Hill, Alicia (25 August 2017). "Heliophysics Small Explorers 2016 Announcement of Opportunity: Concept Study Report Kickoff". NASA / Launch Services Program. https://explorers.larc.nasa.gov/HPSMEX/pdf_files/8_SMEX-AO-2016Helio-CSR-Kickoff-LSP-MENDOZA-HILL.pdf.
- ↑ "NASA - NSSDCA - Spacecraft - Details". Nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov. 2017-03-21. https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1996-037A. Retrieved 2018-04-20.
- ↑ Soffitta, Paolo (2017). "IXPE the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer". UV, X-Ray, and Gamma-Ray Space Instrumentation for Astronomy XX. doi:10.1117/12.2275485. 103970I. Bibcode: 2017SPIE10397E..0IS.
External links
- Small Explorers Missions by Goddard Space Flight Center
- Explorer Program Satellites by the National Space Science Data Center
- SMEX-series satellites by Colorado State University
.png)
| Policy and history |
|  | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Robotic programs |
| ||||||
| Human spaceflight programs |
| ||||||
| Individual featured missions (human and robotic) |
| ||||||
| Communications and navigation | |||||||
| NASA lists | |||||||
| NASA images and artwork | |||||||
| Related | |||||||
 |
