RARR Mission Profile

Goddard Range and Range Rate

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Dust cloud over NW Australia: NASA satellite image
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Dust cloud over NW Australia: NASA satellite image






A vast amount of NASA’s scientific space research was directed at the region between the Sun and the Earth alongside research on the planets by NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).

The wide variety of such research is shown in the list below of some satellites supported by Carnarvon RARR. The selection is arbitrarliy divided into three groups: looking at Earth, looking near Earth, and looking outward.


Looking at Earth

GEOS (Geodetic Earth Orbiting Satellite) 
- locating geographic points and the location and magnitude of gravitational anomalies
NIMBUS 
- meteorology and measuring the spread of oceanic phytoplankton and particulates
SMS (Synchronous Meteorological Satellite) 
- the first of the GOES series. See recent images at http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov
ERTS (Earth Resources Technology Satellite) renamed Landsat 
– monitoring the Earth’s surface, land cover, land use & natural resources

Looking at the near-Earth environment

AE (Atmosphere Explorer) 
– studying processes within the thermosphere and ionosphere and capable of dipping into the lower atmosphere
OGO (Orbiting Geophysical Observatory) 
- with very high apogees and very low perigees, studying geophysical and solar phenomena in the magnetosphere and interplanetary space
IMP (Interplanetary Monitoring Platform) 
– a number of IMPs in a variety of orbits provided simultaneous measurement to obtain the spatial and temporal relationship of geophysical and interplanetary phenomena
Pegasus & MTS (Meteoroid Technology Satellite) 
– study of meteoroid impacts in near-earth orbit

Looking outwards from Earth

HEOS (Highly Eccentric Orbiting Satellite) 
– examining magnetic fields outside the Earth’s magnetosphere
OSO (Orbiting Solar Observatory) 
– observing the Sun’s ultraviolet and x-ray radiation unfiltered by the Earth’s atmosphere
OAO (Orbiting Astronomical Observatory) 
– measuring stars (pulsars & x-ray binaries) with UV telescopes & x-ray instrumentation.
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