Wind
An artist's impression of the Wind spacecraft. (Credit: NASA)
Lifetime: November 1994 - present
Country (primary): United States
Primary Science
The main scientific goal of Wind is to measure the mass, momentum and energy of the solar wind that is transferred into the space environment around the Earth.
High Energy Science
Wind carries two high-energy astronomy instruments for detecting cosmic gamma-ray transients: the Transient Gamma-Ray Spectrometer the Konus experiment.
Science Highlights
- Served as only near-Earth gamma-ray burst detector from 1999 (end of CGRO mission) to 2004 (when Swift was launched)
- Advanced studies of hard X-ray transients such as soft gamma repeaters and the bursting pulsar