Author: Guest authors

By John Mather The Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE) went up on a Delta rocket on Nov. 18, 1989, into a polar sun-synchronous orbit 900 km up. Our team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Ball Aerospace, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and universities built it to look at the cosmic microwave and infrared […]

By Laura Rocchio On July 23, 1972 the first civilian satellite designed to image Earth’s land surfaces was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. On board the satellite, originally named the Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS), but later known as Landsat 1, were two sensors. The primary sensor, called the Return Beam Vidicon […]

By Marcia J. Rieke The development of infrared detector arrays is intertwined with my experiences working on NASA projects. As an astronomer at a university, my interactions with NASA all start with a proposal in response to an opportunity. In 1983, near-infrared detector arrays were beginning to attract the attention of astronomers. At the suggestion […]

By Nancy Grace Roman Looking through the atmosphere is like looking through a piece of old stained glass. The glass has defects that distort the image. The atmosphere also has defects that distort the image, but the defects in the atmosphere move, thus blurring the image as well. The glass is colored, so only some […]