European Retrievable Carrier
The Eureca spacecraft shortly after being released from the Space Shuttle Atlantis. (Credit: ESA/NASA)
The Eureca spacecraft being retrieved by the Space Shuttle Endeavour. (Credit: ESA/NASA)
Lifetime: July 1992 - July 1993
Operator (primary): ESA (launched by NASA)
Primary Science
The European Retrievable Carrier, or Eureca for short, was a satellite that carried 15 experiments including a number of experiments for microgravity studies, solar observations and material technology investigations.
High Energy Science
One of the expermiments in the Eureca payload was the Wide Angle Telescope for Cosmic Hard X-rays, or WATCH for short. WATCH was also flown on the Granat mission.
Science Highlights
- Monitoring of two dozen known X-ray sources, some for over 100 days
- Discovered a number of new X-ray transients
- Detected 19 gamma-ray bursts, a dozen of those with localizations within a degree