NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has written off GALEX
On the eve of NASA reported that disabled the telescope GALEX (Galaxy Evolution Explorer) after nearly 10 years of operation of the latter. The apparatus, as the name implies, studied the evolution of galaxies, using its ultraviolet eyes. GALEX was researching galaxies far from us at a distance of 10 billion light years. According to the space agency, the signal on the decommissioning GALEX was given from the Mission Control Center Orbital Sciences Corp in Dulles last Friday.
According to calculations of ballistics, the unit will be in Earth orbit for approximately 65 years, after which it will begin to fall and actively burn on re-entry. machine was launched April 28, 2003 with the launch vehicle Pegasus XL and launched into an almost circular orbit at 697 km with an inclination of about 29 degrees. The first observation of 21 May 2003 was dedicated to the crew of space shuttle Columbia, in the course of which were obtained images of the sky in the constellation Hercules.
This area was chosen for the reason that it is in the direction of the constellation was the shuttle during the last contact with mission control. Sputnik produced Corporation Orbital Sciences Corporation based platform LeoStar-2. Originally allocated for 29 months to work planned to look into the history of the universe 10 billion years ago, in order to figure out how to form stars and galaxies.
Space Observatory has studied hundreds of thousands of galaxies, based on the results of these observations has been compiled several surveys of the sky. In 2007, a member of the research team Telescope Mike Seibert discovery was made, indicating the fate of stars like the Sun. This is made possible by the ability of the detector telescope Galex focus on one type of radiation. The star Mira was discovered tail of gas and dust around a long 2 degrees (13 light years).
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