NASA’s new mission, Tracers, will soon start to study how the Magnetic Earth shield protects our planet from the effects of space weather. Abbreviation of tandem reconnection and electrodynamic recognition satellites, the Twin Tracers spacecraft raised at 11:13 PDT (2:13 p.m. HA) Wednesday aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Espace 4 launch complex in the East in Vandenberg Space Base Force in California.
“NASA is proud to launch tracers to demonstrate and extend American pre -eminence in space science research and technology,” said NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy. “The satellites of the tracers will make us advance in the decoding of space and will promote our understanding of the connection between the earth and the sun. This mission will produce breakthroughs that will advance our pursuit of the moon, and subsequently, March. ”
The twin satellites will fly one behind the others – following as closely as 10 seconds intervals in the same place – and will take 3,000 record measures in one year to build a step -by -step image of the way in which magnetic reconnection changes over time.
Driving with tracers aboard the Falcon 9 was the Athena Epic of NASA (cost of integration of the economic payload), the PEXT (Polylingue experimental terminal) and the real missions (relativist electronic atmospheric loss) – three small satellites to demonstrate new technologies and collect scientific data. These three missions have been successfully deployed and mission controllers will work to contact them in the next few hours and days.
The ground controllers for the mission of the tracers established communications with the second of the two spaceships at 3:43 pm (6:43 p.m. HA), about 3 hours after its separation from the rocket. Over the next four weeks, the tracers will undergo a period of commissioning during which mission controllers will check their instruments and systems.
Once erased, twin satellites will start their privileged 12 -month mission to study a process called magnetic reconnection, answering key questions about how it shapes the impacts of the sun and space on our daily life.
“The NASA heliophysics fleet helps protect the House of Humanity in space and understand the influence of our nearest star, The Sun,” said Joe Westlake, director of the heliophysics division at NASA headquarters in Washington. “By adding tracers to this fleet, we will compromise you to better understand these impacts here on earth.”
The two space tracers will be passed through an open region in the terrestrial magnetic field near the North Pole, called Polar Cusp. Here, the tracers will study the explosive magnetic events that occur when the magnetic field of the sun – transported in space in a flow of solar materials called the solar wind – collides with the magnetic field of the earth. This collision creates an accumulation of energy which causes magnetic reconnection, when the magnetic field lines go and realign explosively, moving away from high -speed particles.
Flying through the polar cuspable allows satellites of the tracers to study the results of these magnetic explosions, measuring charged particles that rush into the atmosphere of the earth and collide with atmospheric gases – giving scientists the tools to reconstruct exactly how the changing in the erect wind entering affects how and speed, energy and particles are associated with near space.
“The successful launch of Tracers is a tribute to many years of work by an excellent team,” said David Miles, director of tracers at Iowa University. “Tracers is about to transform our understanding of the Earth’s magnetosphere. We are delighted to explore the dynamic processes of space management. ”
Small satellites for the ride
Athena Epic is a Pathfinder mission which will demonstrate the use by NASA of innovative and configurable commercial architecture to improve the flexibility of payload conceptions, reduce the launching calendar and reduce the overall costs of future missions, as well as the advantages of work in collaboration with federal partners. In addition to this demonstration for NASA, once the Epic Athena satellite has completed its two -week commissioning period, the mission will spend the next 12 months taking out radiation measures for long waves out of the earth.
The demonstration of the PEXT will test for the first time interoperability between commercial communication networks and the government by demonstrating a large -strip polylingue terminal in low terrestrial orbit. This terminal will use radios defined by software to jump between government and commercial networks, similar to the wandering mobile phones between suppliers on Earth. These terminals could allow future missions to switch transparently between networks and access new commercial services throughout its life cycle in space.
The real mission is a cubeat that will study how energy electrons are dispersed outside the Van Allen radiation belts and in the atmosphere of the earth. In the shape of concentric rings above the equator of the earth, the Van Allen belts are composed of a mixture of electrons and high energy protons which are trapped in place by the magnetic field of the earth. The study of electrons and their interactions, real intends to improve our understanding of these energetic particles which can damage the spatial devices and astronauts which put themselves in danger which cross them.
The mission of the tracers is headed by David Miles at the Iowa University with the support of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. The Office of the NASA Heliophysical Heliophysical Explorers at Goddard Space Flight Center of the Agency in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the mission of the Heliophysical Division of NASA headquarters in Washington. The Iowa University, the Southwest Research Institute, the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California in Berkeley, all of the main instruments on the tracers.
Athena’s epic mission is led by the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and is a partnership between the Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration, American and Novawurks. The launch of Athena Epic is supported by the launching seop of the integrator. The PEXT demonstration is managed by the NASA Scan (Space Communications and Navigation) program in partnership with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, with the launch support by York Space Systems. The real project is led by the Dartmouth College of Hanover, New Hampshire, and is a partnership between Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Montana State University and Boston University. Sponsored by the Heliophysical Division of NASA and the launching initiative of Cubesat, it was included by the launch of the integrator Maverick Space Systems.
The NASA launching services program, based in the agency Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the VADR contract (Acquisition of Capital Records and Carpooling Classification classification).
To find out more about the tracers, visit:
https://nasa.gov/tracers
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Abbey Interrerant / Karen Fox
Headquarters, Washington
301-201-0124 / 202-358-1600
abbey.a.interrantor@nasa.gov / karen.c.fox@nasa.gov
Sarah Frazier
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland
202-853-7191
sarah.frazier@nasa.gov
