Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) is a NASA Explorer program Solar and space exploration mission to study matter comprising energetic particles from the solar wind, the interplanetary medium, and other sources. Real-time data from ACE is used by the Space Weather Prediction Center to improve forecasts and warnings of solar storms. The ACE robotic spacecraft was launched August 25, 1997 and is currently operating in a Lissajous orbit close to the L1 Lagrange point (which lies between the Sun and the Earth at a distance of some 1.5 million km from the latter). The spacecraft is still in generally good condition, and has enough fuel to maintain its orbit until 2024. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center managed the development and integration of the ACE spacecraft.
Read more about Advanced Composition Explorer: Instrumentation
Famous quotes containing the words advanced, composition and/or explorer:
“King David was old and advanced in years; and although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Kings 1:1.
“When I think of God, when I think of him as existent, and when I believe him to be existent, my idea of him neither increases nor diminishes. But as it is certain there is a great difference betwixt the simple conception of the existence of an object, and the belief of it, and as this difference lies not in the parts or composition of the idea which we conceive; it follows, that it must lie in the manner in which we conceive it.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one’s stomach the separation from terra ... these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known ... this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)