Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) was a NASA-operated orbital observatory whose mission was to study the Earth’s atmosphere, particularly the protective ozone layer. The satellite was deployed from Space Shuttle "Discovery" during the STS-48 mission on 15 September 1991. It entered Earth orbit at an operational altitude of , with an orbital inclination of 57 degrees. The original mission duration was to be only three years, but was extended several times. When the mission finally ended in June 2005 due to funding cuts, 14 years after the satellite's launch, six of its ten instruments were
Atmosphere of the Moon on the order of just a few protons per cubic centimeter, it is virtually a vacuum in comparison with the atmosphere of the Earth. The Moon may also have a tenuous "atmosphere" of electrostatically-levitated dust. See Moon dust for more details. In October 2017, NASA scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center and the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston announced their finding, based on studies of Moon magma samples retrieved by the Apollo missions, that the Moon had once possessed a relatively thick atmosphere for a period of 70 million years between 3 and 4 billion years ago. This