Search Ames
Current Missions
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Phoenix Mars Scout (includes NASA Ames partnership)
In the continuing pursuit of water on Mars, the poles are a good place to probe, as water ice is found there. This mission will send the Phoenix high-latitude lander to Mars, deploy its robotic arm and dig trenches up to 1.6 feet (one half meter) into the layers of water ice.
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Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS)
The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission to look for water on the moon will be a 'secondary payload spacecraft.' LCROSS will begin its trip to the moon on the same rocket as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which will conduct a different lunar task. Launch is scheduled for October 2008 on an Atlas V rocket from Kennedy Space Center, Florida.
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Kepler
Kepler is NASA's first mission capable of finding Earth-size and smaller planets. The Kepler mission, scheduled to launch in 2008, will monitor the brightness of stars to find planets that pass in front of them during the planets' orbits. During such passes or 'transits,' the planets will slightly decrease the star's brightness.
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SOFIA (Joint Venture)
The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is a joint venture of the U.S. and German aerospace agencies, NASA and the DLR. The aircraft is supplied by the U.S., and the telescope by Germany. Modifications of the Boeing 747SP airframe to accommodate the telescope, mission-unique equipment and large external door were made by L-3 Communications Integrated Systems of Waco, Texas.
Future Missions
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ExoMars Urey instrument (includes NASA Ames partnership)
NASA-funded researchers are refining a tool that could not only check for the faintest traces of life's molecular building blocks on Mars, but could also determine whether they have been produced by anything alive.
Past Missions
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Public to Help NASA, SETI Institute, Other Scientists Study Meteor Shower
An airborne mission to search for evidence of a comet's primordial crust and help improve meteor storm prediction models. On September 1, 2007, a team of 24 researchers will deploy from NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. to observe the rare Aurigid meteor shower, caused by a trail of 2000-year old dust from long-period comet C/1911 N1 (Kiess).
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GeneSat-1
The 11-pound (5-kilogram) GeneSat-1, carrying bacteria inside a miniature laboratory, was launched on Dec. 16, 2006. The very small NASA satellite has proven that scientists can quickly design and launch a new class of inexpensive spacecraft -- and conduct significant science.
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Leonids Flights (includes NASA Ames partnership)
Scientists have been using airborne observatories and other ground-based methods to study the annual Leonid meteor showers over the years.
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NASA Ames Contributions to the Apollo Moon Missions
The Apollo encounter with our moon was one of the defining events of the last century.
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Pioneer-10 and Pioneer-11
Pioneer 10 was launched toward Jupiter in 1972. This spacecraft was the first one to fly to Jupiter, Saturn, the Milky Way Galaxy and stars. After Pioneer 10 emerged through the asteroid belt, Pioneer 11 was launched on a similar trajectory on April 5, 1973, like Pioneer 10, on top of an Atlas/Centaur/TE364-4 launch vehicle.
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Pioneer Venus 1, Orbiter and Multiprobe spacecraft (included NASA Ames partnership)
Pioneer Venus consisted of two spacecraft launched separately to study Venus: the orbiter and the multiprobe. The Pioneer Venus 1 orbiter was launched May 20, 1978, from the Kennedy Space Center aboard an Atlas-Centaur rocket. The Pioneer Venus multiprobe was launched on Aug. 8, 1978. It encountered Venus on Dec. 9, 1978. It consisted of five separate probes. The Sounder was released from the ‘Bus’ on Nov. 15, 1978; three small probes were released on Nov. 19, 1978.
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Lunar Prospector
Launched on Jan. 6, 1998, Lunar Prospector mapped the moon’s surface composition and looked for possible deposits of polar ice, measure magnetic and gravity fields, as well as study lunar 'out gassing.' On March 5, 1998, scientists announced that Lunar Prospector's neutron spectrometer instrument had detected hydrogen at both lunar poles, which scientists theorized to be in the form of water ice.
