Scientific results from the ISEE and GEOS missions, and the major objectives of the four-spacecraft Cluster mission are described. The GEOS 1 and 2 were launched, respectively, in Aug. 1977 and Jul. 1978; GEOS 2 replaced GEOS 1 which suffered from an orbit injection failure. The GEOS spacecraft were designed to study fields and plasmas in the geostationary orbit and to serve as reference spacecraft for the International Magnetospheric Study. The ISEE mission consisted of three spacecraft; ISEE 1 and 3 were provided by NASA and ISEE-2 was contributed by ESA. While ISEE 1 and 2 orbited in close proximity, ISEE 3 was positioned between Sun and Earth. With two closely orbiting spacecraft one is able to disentangle variations in space from variations in time in a system that constantly expands, shrinks, and changes topology. The Cluster mission will be implemented in collaboration by ESA and NASA; The Institute of Space Research (IKI) of the Soviet Academy of Science will provide at least two spacecraft. Cluster will study small scale structures in three dimensions in the Earth's plasma environment.
ESA's (European Space Agency's) Space Plasma Physics Missions: The Past and the Future Ten Years
1989
7 pages
Report
No indication
English
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