Space weather: NASA successfully launches its Mission Tracers thanks to SpaceX
Despite the Budget crisis at NASA Forcing him to make certain cuts, other missions continue. The American space agency has just launched two satellites as part of its Tracers mission (Tandem Reconnection and CUSP Electrodynamics Satellite recognition). They took off this Wednesday on Wednesday on the Falcon 9 rocket in SpaceX, from California.
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A duo to unravel the mysteries of space weather
The two satellites will first undergo four weeks of tests before starting their mission. They will then spend 12 months to collect data to understand the space weather. For this, they will study a process called magnetic reconnection, and will analyze plasma in areas of the terrestrial magnetic field located above the poles. Scientists hope to better understand how the magnetosphere reacts to solar wind.
The solar wind is at the origin of the northern lights and geomagnetic thunderstorms, when particles emitted by the sun hit the terrestrial magnetic field at speeds close to that of light. However, this phenomenon is still poorly understood.
In order to study this question, the Tracers mission is made up of two satellites which orbit in tandem at an altitude of 590 kilometers. They will perform an orbit every 90 minutes, which leaves a significant time interval between two measurements in the same place.
This is why the satellites are two in number. The second adopts an orbit two minutes behind the first, which makes it possible to obtain two close measures and to better understand the evolution of the conditions.
“” “Not only will this make it possible to obtain a global image of reconnection in the VCR, but this will also make it possible to study statistically how reconnection depends on the state of the solar wind”Said John Dorelli, scientist of the Mission Tracers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in NASA.“It will really help us understand how to predict the space weather in the magnetosphere. “
Three other experimental satellites successfully launched
The two satellites were also accompanied by three other small satellites. The first, Athena Epic (Economal Payload Integration Cost), tests a new satellite architecture to facilitate the orbit of measurement instruments. It is equipped with an instrument to measure the amount of energy emitted by the earth towards space.
The second, Pext (Terminal Polylingual Experimental), will experience communications through different networks of satellites in order to prepare the ground for the end of NASA TDRS satellites during the 2030s.
