🛰️ Mission
GALEX
Ten years of the ultraviolet sky.
- Launched
- 28 April 2003, 23 years ago
- Worked for
- 10 years, until 28 June 2013
- Built by
- NASA
- Sees
- Ultraviolet light
- Where it is
- Circled Earth about 690 km up
- Best known for
- Mapped where galaxies are making new stars — young hot stars shine brightest in ultraviolet
Did you know?
- The picture of Andromeda in this app is GALEX’s. The rings are lanes of young stars, invisible in ordinary light.
- Ultraviolet never reaches the ground: our air blocks it, which is the whole reason this telescope had to fly.
What it showed us
Andromeda Galaxy
The nearest big galaxy, and one day it will merge with ours.
More NASA photos of GALEXStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of missions
Hubble Space Telescope
Thirty-six years above the weather, and still working.
James Webb Space Telescope
A golden mirror that sees the first galaxies in infrared.
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The telescope that shows what is hot and violent.
Spitzer Space Telescope
Sixteen years of infrared, through dust that hides everything else.
Kepler
Stared at one patch of sky and found thousands of planets.
TESS
Kepler’s successor, watching the whole sky for planets.