Midcourse Space Experiment

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) was a Ballistic Missile Defense Organization satellite experiment (unmanned space mission) to map bright infrared sources in space. Operational from 1996-1997, MSX mapped the galactic plane and areas either missed or identified as particularly bright by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) at wavelengths of 8.28 µm, 12.13 µm, 14.65 µm, and 21.3 µm. It carried the 33-cm SPIRIT III infrared telescope with solid hydrogen-cooled five line-scanned infrared focal plane arrays.

Calibration of MSX posed a challenge for designers of the experiment, as baselines did not exist for the bands it would be observing under. Engineers solved the problem by having MSX fire projectiles of known composition in front of the detector, and calibrating the instruments to the known black-body curves of the objects.

MSX data is currently available in the Infrared Science Archive (IRSA) provided by NASA's Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC).