For more information on this mission, click
on the figure.
Technology Requirements
- Solar electric propulsion
- Interspacecraft communication
- Autonomous operation
Societal Benefits
- Understanding of substorm process
will ultimately enable
prediction of geomagnetic activity.
- Predictive capability will lead
to mitigation of
environmental hazards
to high-technology systems
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Science Objectives
- Reconnection on magnetopause at high and low latitudes
- Reconnection in magnetotail, magnetotail dynamics
- Plasma entry into magnetosphere
- Physics of current sheets
- Substorm initiation processes
- Cross-scale coupling between micro- and mesoscale phenomena
Mission Description
- Four spacecraft fly in close proximity
in four different orbits in the magnetosphere to access
carefully selected regions of energy transfer.
- Chemical propulsion, together with lunar gravity assists,
or solar electric propulsion provides the
required orbital changes.
Measurement Strategy
- Magnetic and electric fields
- Plasma, including composition
- Plasma and radio waves
- Energetic particles
- Magnetospheric imaging with neutral atom imagers on two separate
satellites in different orbits to provide stereo images of the regions
under study
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