The Spacecraft:

The spacecraft operated out of the Bowie State Satellite Operations and Control Center are the Solar Anomalous and Magnetospheric Particle Explorer (SAMPEX), and the Wide-field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) missions. Both are part the NASA Small Explorer program and were designed and build at Goddard Space Flight Center in nearby Greenbelt, Maryland.

	SAMPEX gathers scientific data in the fields of space plasma physics, solar physics and atmospheric physics. It was launched on a Scout rocket on July 3, 1992. SAMPEX flight operations moved from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to Bowie State University in October, 1997.
	WIRE was launched in March, 1999 aboard a Pegasus rocket. It was operated and controlled at NASA Goddard until mission operations were moved to the BSOCC in January, 2004. WIRE performs asteroseismology, which is a part of astrophysics that is concerned with the elemental composition of stars.