Over the years, NASA has launched a series of “Explorer” spacecraft carrying a wide variety of scientific investigations. It is not only the longest running series of spacecraft, but has produced highly-durable (i.e., well-engineered) spacecraft as well.
Investigations characterized by definition, development, mission operations, and data analysis costs not to exceed $180 to $200 million total cost to NASA.
Missions in Development — HelioSwarm | MUSE | SPHEREx
Operational Missions — ACE | ICON | Swift | TESS | THEMIS
Past Missions — FUSE | IMAGE | RXTE (XTE) | WISE | WMAP (MAP)
Investigations characterized by definition, development, mission operations, and data analysis costs not to exceed $120 million total cost to NASA.
Missions in Development — COSI | PUNCH | TRACERS
Operational Missions — IBEX | IRIS | IXPE | NuSTAR | RHESSI (HESSI)
Past Missions — AIM | FAST | GALEX | SAMPEX | SWAS | TRACE
Investigations characterized by definition, development, mission operations, and data analysis costs not to exceed $15.0M (real year dollars) total cost to NASA. UNEX missions will be launched by a variety of low cost methods
Investigations characterized by being part of a non-NASA space mission of any size and having a total NASA cost of under $55 million. These missions are conducted on a no-exchange-of-funds basis with the organization sponsoring the mission. NASA intends to solicit proposals for Missions of Opportunity with each Announcement of Opportunity (AO) issued for EX, UNEX, SMEX, and MIDEX investigations.
Missions in Development — CASE |
EUVST | EZIE | SunRISE
Operational Missions — AWE | Euclid | GOLD | GUSTO | NICER | TWINS | XRISM
Past Missions — CINDI | HETE-2 | Hitomi (ASTRO-H) | Suzaku (Astro-E2)
Operational Missions — INTEGRAL
