NASA Launches Four Magnetic Line Reconnection Studios

Cape Canaveral, Florida, NASA

NASA launched on Thursday four identical spacecraft to study the interaction of the magnetic fields of the Earth and the Sun. An Atlas unmanned rocket with NASA 's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) devices on board took off from Cape Canaveral according to a schedule. Within two hours after launch, all four research observatories continued on their own.

“It's just fine,” launch manager Omar Baez shared at the end of the work, “Applause from others ... I can't describe it.”

The quartet of observatories is launched into an oblong orbit of tens of thousands of kilometers in the magnetosphere - almost halfway to the moon. All of them will be located practically at one point, at a distance of 10 to 400 km from each other, forming a kind of “pyramid”. A similar shape was chosen in order to provide a 3-D small-scale reconnection of magnetic lines . We observe this phenomenon in the form of geomagnetic storms, solar flares, and even the northern lights. The data obtained by scientists can help to understand the so-called "space weather."

Each observatory in appearance resembles a huge octagonal wheel, 3.35 meters across, 1.21 meters in height and weighing about 1,360 kilograms. The observatories were numbered and stacked like tires on top of a rocket. After going into space, Observatory No. 4 was the first to set off, and then with an interval of five minutes, and the rest, one after the other.


Observatory No. 1 at the assembly stage, photo by NASA .

“All observatories are normal and working. There are no barriers to continue our mission, ”said Craig Tuli, project manager at NASA.

Research head Jim Birch of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio says the observatories will allow for electron-scale research. This is an order of magnitude better results than those that were obtained earlier in the course of studies of previous heliophysical missions. At the disposal of scientists will be more than a hundred different sensors. The primary collection of information will begin this summer, which will be preceded by a five-month testing period for all systems.