Some Nasa hardware

1. Mars Global Surveyor
It was made by NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was launched November 1996. It completed its primary mission and is now on a extended mission phase.

It looks like a rectangle shaped box with wing-like projections extending from opposite sides. When fully loaded with propellant at the time of the launch, the spacecraft weighed 2,342 pounds.

The spacecraft circles mars once every 117.65 minutes at an average altitude of 235 miles. It is in a polar orbit which is almost perfectly circular.


2. Ulysses probe
is an unmanned probe designed to study the Sun at all latitudes. The spacecraft is equipped with instruments to characterize fields, particles, and dust, and is powered by a radiosotope thermoelectric generator.

3. Solar and Heliosperic Observatory
a spacecraft launched on December 2 1995 to study the sun, and began normal operations in May 1996. The 610 kg is in a halo orbit between the Earth and the Sun.

4. Pioneer 10 Probe
The Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, and was the first spacecraft to make direct observations of Jupiter. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex on March 2, 1972.

It was made to study the interplanetary and planetary magnetic fields; solar wind parameters; cosmic rays; transition region of the heliospere; neutral hydrogen abundance; distrubution, size mass, flux, and velocity of dust particles; Jovian radio waves; Jovian aurorae; atmosphere of Jupiter and some of its satellites, particularly lo; and to photograph Jupiter and its satellites.

5. Voyager 2
Voyager 2 is an unmanned interplanetary spacecraft. Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. It is the first spacecraft to travel to Uranus and Neptune, thus completing a portion of the so called Planetary Grand Tour, a rare geometric arrangement of the outer planets that only occurs only once every 176 years.

6. Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope is a telescope in orbit around the Earth. Its position outside the Earth's atmosphere allows it to take sharp optical images of very faint objects, and since its launch in 1990, it has become one of the most important telescopes in the history of astronomy.