Welcome From Director Jon Morse

Welcome to the Science Mission Directorate's Astrophysics Division.

Here at NASA Headquarters our dedicated team of scientists and engineers administers and oversees programs that are designed to answer key cutting-edge questions in astronomy and astrophysics. We also oversee over a dozen operational missions that are currently in flight.

It is an especially exciting time for the Astrophysics Division. The Servicing Mission 4 has recently completed making the Hubble Space Telescope the best it has ever been. The Kepler mission has started acquiring data in its search for Earth-like planets. ESA has launched the Herschel and Planck spacecrafts. The Spitzer Space Telescope, after 5.5 years, has finally run out of cryogen and completed its "cold" mission activities. A new Small Explorer (SMEX) Astrophysics mission, Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEM), has been selected and will probe the bending of space and the curving of light in regions of extreme gravity. Later this year the WISE spacecraft will launch and start its mission to study the sky in the mid-infrared.

I invite you to learn more about our missions and the scientific questions they are designed to answer. I hope you will be as excited as we are to see the fascinating discoveries from such current missions as Hubble, Chandra, Swift, Fermi, and Kepler, as well as the future WISE, NuSTAR and James Webb Space Telescope.

Dr. Jon Morse
Director Astrophysics Division