SpaceX launched twin satellites for NASA on Wednesday which will study how the electrically loaded solar wind interacts with the magnetic field of the earth, constantly creating evolution and sometimes dangerous “Space weather” affecting satellites, electrical networks and other critical systems.
The identical satellites of the tracers will operate in the VCR, “the region around our land which is dominated by the magnetic field of the planet, and it protects us from stellar radiation and really from everything that happens in space,” said Joseph Westlake, director of the NASA solar physics division.
“What we will learn from tracers is essential for understanding and possibly forecasting how the energy of our sun has an impact on the earth and our space and our assets on the ground, whether GPS signals or communication, electrical networks, space assets and our astronauts working in space.
“It will help us protect our lifestyle here on earth.”
Spacex
The hitch to space with tracers at the top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was five other small satellites, one of which will use a new “polylingue” terminal to communicate with several other satellites and space probes using different protocols.
Another will collect data on the quantity of solar energy that the earth absorbs and reappears in space, known as “radiation budget”, and another which will focus on the way in which the high energy “killers” are eliminated from Van Allen radiation belts to rain in the atmosphere.
Two other small satellites were on board, including an experimental “cubeat” that will test 5G communication technology at space in space and another built by an Australian company carrying five small satellites to test an air traffic management technology that could provide monitoring of aircraft and communications all over the world.
The mission started at 2:13 p.m. HAE when a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket broke out in life at the 4th launch complex at the Vandenberg Space Force base on the Californian coast. The launch a day of delay due to a regional power failure on Tuesday which interrupted air traffic communications on the Pacific Ocean near Vandenberg.
The second time, the countdown checked gently to zero and after having increased the upper stage and the useful loads of the lower atmosphere, the first step has taken off, reversed the route and returned to a landing near the launch ramp.
Spacex
A few seconds later, the engine of the upper stadium stopped to put the vehicle in its planned preliminary orbit. The two satellites constituting the payload of the main tracers were deployed about an hour and a half after the launch.
Two of the other Smallsats were to be released earlier in a slightly different orbit, the rest following the tracers a few minutes later.
Tracers is an acronym for tandem reconnection and electrodynamic recognition satellites of the cuspid. The twin space vessel, built by Boeing, will fly in tandem on the same orbit, 10 seconds two minutes apart, helping researchers precisely measure the fast changes indicating how the solar wind “is accompanied” with the magnetic field of the earth.
“So the sun is a ball of burning and ardent plasma and as it burns, it blows from an exhaust that we call the solar wind, it is a plasma, and it is always in streaming from the sun to the earth,” said David Miles, principal investigator of the University of Iowa.
“And sometimes, the magnetic field of the earth mainly holds it in the same way as if you have a rock in a stream, the kind of water flows around it. But other times, these two coupling systems (and) you throw the mass, energy and momentum in the terrestrial system.”
Nasa
This coupling leads to a spectacular Auroral displays“But that also leads to some of the negative things we want … Understand and alleviate, such as unforeseen electric currents in our electrical networks which can potentially cause accelerated aging in electric pipelines, GPS disturbance, things like that.”
“So what we are looking to try to understand is how the coupling between these systems changes in space and time,” said Miles.
The objectives of other satellites launched on Wednesday range from fundamental science to technological development. The Polylingue, or PEXT experimental terminal, will test the equipment capable of sending and receiving data from several government and commercial satellites on several communication protocols.
The objective is to rationalize communications to and from a wide variety of satellites and space probes to improve the efficiency and lower costs.
Spacex
Another satellite, known as Athena-Epic, will continue continuous measures of the Earth’s radiation budget, the balance between solar energy entering the Earth’s environment in relation to energy radiated in space.
Using the spare parts of previous missions, Athena-Epic will test innovative Lego satellite components intended to reduce costs while reducing the size of satellites.
The relativistic, or real atmospheric loss, satellite, another small cubeat, will study how electrons in Van Allen radiation belts are put in the place to constitute threats against satellites and other systems. Robyn Millan de Dartmouth College is the main investigator.
“The radiation belts are a region surrounding the earth which are filled with high-energy loaded particles that move near the speed of light,” she said. “These are sometimes called killer electrons because these particles are a danger for our satellites in space. They also rain on our atmosphere where they can contribute to the destruction of ozone.”
The real cubeat weighs less than 10 pounds and measures only a long foot. Despite its small size, “it carries a powerful particle sensor which will make very rapid measurements of these electrons for the first time when they enter our atmosphere, and this is really essential to understand what diffuses them.”
What makes it real unique, she said, was the small size of the sensor, which allows it to be transported by a cubeat, which “could allow future missions, in particular those requiring constellations of satellites”.