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A Brief History of High-Energy Astronomy: 1985 - 1989
In Reverse Chronological Order
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Dec 2, 1989 |
The Solar Maximum
Mission (SMM) re-enters the Earth's atmosphere and is
destroyed. SMM had collected data until Nov 24, 1989, at which time the
aerodynamic forces became too great for the Attitude Control System to
maintain accurate pointing. Although primarily a solar mission,
SMM's scientific payload included the Hard X-Ray Burst Spectrometer
and the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer instruments both of which could and did observe
cosmic high-energy sources such as Supernova 1987A, the black hole binary
system, Cygnus X-1, as well as many cosmic gamma-ray bursts. |
Dec 1, 1989 |
Launch of
Granat, a Russian-led
mission dedicated to X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. Its instruments included
WATCH, an all-sky monitor in the 6 to 120 keV energy band, SIGMA, a coded-mask
X-ray telescope, PHEBUS, a gamma-ray burst experiment, and 4 other experiments.
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Nov 18, 1989 |
Launch of the
Cosmic Background
Explorer (COBE), a NASA mission whose primary goals were to
study the spectrum and anisotropy of the cosmic 3 degree K background in the
energy band from 0.1 to 10 mm, and the spectrum and angular distribution of
the diffuse infrared background in the IR and far-IR bands (1 to 300 microns).
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Oct 18, 1989 |
Launch of the
Galileo mission to Jupiter from the Space Shuttle Atlantis
(STS-34). Galileo had an array of instruments to study Jupiter, its moons,
and the Jovian space environment, as well as a probe which was designed to
be dropped into the Jovian atmosphere. |
Aug 25, 1989 |
Closest approach (44,800 km) by
Voyager 2 to Neptune. Since this time Voyager 2 has been
travelling through the outer Solar System in search of the heliopause
(the interface between the solar wind and interstellar space). |
Jul 1989 |
Astron ceases
operation. Astron was launched with a projected mission lifetime of
one year, but by the time of its shutdown, it had exceeded this goal
by over five years. |
May 4, 1989 |
Launch of the
Magellan mission to Venus; the primary goal of this mission
was to make the most highly detailed maps of this planet up to this date
using a sophisticated imaging radar. |
Mar 27, 1989 |
Phobos 2 suffers a
failure on the spacecraft while maneuvering into a matching orbit
with the Martian moon Phobos. |
Jan 29, 1989 |
Phobos 2 arrives
at Mars and begins its Martian experiments. |
Sep 2, 1988 |
Phobos 1 is sent a
faulty command sequence, causing the spacecraft to shut down. Contact
with the spacecraft was never re-established. |
Jul 12, 1988 |
Launch of the Soviet probe to Mars,
Phobos 2. |
Jul 7, 1988 |
Launch of the Soviet probe to Mars,
Phobos 1. |
Aug-Oct 1987 |
Detection of gamma-ray emission lines produced by the radioactive decay
of the Cobalt 56 isotope from the direction of the supernova SN 1987A,
by the Solar Maximum Mission Gamma-Ray Spectrometer. The detection of
these lines at 837 and 1238 keV was a triumphant confirmation of the theory
that the optical light curves of supernovae in the later stages are
powered by the nucleosynthesis of Iron 56 from Cobalt 56 (which itself
is produced by the radioactive decay of Nickel 56). See Matz et al.
(Nature, 331, 416, 1988) for more details. |
Jun-Aug 1987 |
Detection of X-rays and soft gamma-rays from the supernova SN
1987A, by the Ginga Large Area Counters and the
Mir-Kvant/Roentgen Observatory, in the 4 - 40 and 20 - 300 keV
energy ranges, respectively. The
observed X-ray emission was rather hard and kept on increasing for several
months after the original detections. See Sunyaev et al., Dotani et al., and
several other papers in Nature, 330, 227 et seq., 1987 for more details of
these early observations, and Inoue et al. (PASJ, 43, 213, 1991) for
a discussion of the Ginga observations made over the 3+ years after the
supernova peak. |
Apr 12 1987 |
Attachment of the
Kvant 1
module to the USSR's Mir space station. This module contained
(among other things) the Roentgen suite of X-ray and low-energy gamma-ray
instruments. They made observations for about a decade, apart from
a one-year gap from Fall 1989 to Fall 1990 due to a reconfiguration of
the Mir-Kvant Observatory. Mir was continuously occupied, except for two
short periods, until August 1999. It re-entered the Earth's
atmosphere on March 23, 2001. |
Feb 23 - 24, 1987 |
Supernova 1987A in the Large Magellanic Cloud is discovered by three
separate optical observers: see IAU Circular No. 4316 (1987). This is the
nearest known supernova in several hundred years. Two neutrino detectors
detect a burst of neutrinos a few hours before the optical outburst, the
first confirmed detection of neutrinos from a cosmic source other than the
Sun: see, for example, the paper by Hirata et al. (1987), Phys. Rev. Letts,
58, 1490. |
Feb 5, 1987 |
Launch of the third Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite
Ginga, known as
Astro C prior to launch. |
Apr 9, 1986 |
EXOSAT ceases operation. |
Feb 19, 1986 |
Launch of the first module of the Soviet space station
Mir. Mir was constructed in orbit over the next 10 years by adding more
modules.
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Jan 28, 1986
11:39 EST |
The
Space Shuttle Challenger explodes 73 seconds after launch; all
seven crew members onboard are killed. |
Jan 24, 1986 |
NASA's
Voyager 2 spacecraft makes its closest approach to Uranus. |
Oct 5, 1985 |
Tenma,
the second Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite (Astro-B), ceases
operation. |
Sep 13, 1985 |
The United States Air Force satellite P 78-1 ceases operation
after being deliberately disabled by the USAF as part of an
anti-satellite weapons test. P 78-1 carried a gamma-ray spectrometer, a
white-light spectrograph, an extreme-ultraviolet spectrometer, a
high-latitude
particle spectrometer, an aerosol monitor, and an X-ray monitor. |
Sep 11, 1985 |
International Cometary
Explorer (ICE; formerly ISEE-3) flies through the tail of the
comet P/Giacobini-Zinner. It is the first probe to encounter a comet.
Later in 1985, ICE also flies within 0.2 A.U. of P/Halley. |
Apr 15, 1985 |
Hakucho (CORSA-B),
the first Japanese X-ray astronomy satellite,
ceases operation. |
Return to main History
of High-Energy Astronomy page
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the following individuals for their
contributions to this page:
Jesse S. Allen, and
Ian M. George
along with
JPL's Space Calendar and the
Working Group for the History of Astronomy's
Astronomiae Historia (History of Astronomy) information pages.
Web page author: Stephen A. Drake (based on an original by Jesse S. Allen)
Web page maintainer: Stephen A. Drake
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