Explorer
catdynamics | May 24, 2012The word came out last night that the GEMS Small Explorer Class Mission has been cancelled.
GEMS is an x-ray polarimetry mission, using new detector technology, and the rumours (from the "Astronomers" group on fb) are that an Independent Cost Estimate showed the mission blowing its budget.
The mission passed a design review earlier this spring, but was red flagged on the mission chart at a recent NASA Astrophysics status presentation.
Now, some of you may remember the flap over the NASA Senior Review last month.
A review of ongoing missions recommended that all be continued at present level…
esiegel | March 6, 2008The cosmic microwave background is the radiation left over from the big bang. It's very uniform, 2.725 Kelvin everywhere. We're moving with respect to it, so there's a doppler shift, and we see that as a dipole moment in the Temperature. When we subtract that out, we see variations on the order of 30 microKelvins! WMAP is a satellite (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) that measured these anisotropies, and they just released its year 5 data. First off, with the uniform and dipole parts subtracted out, and with the foreground from the galaxy also taken out, here's the map of the microwave…