Latest Magnetosphere Stories

After a journey of more than 2.2 billion miles and three and a half years, NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of Mercury just after 2 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 14, 2008. All seven scientific instruments worked flawlessly, producing a stream of surprises that is amazing and delighting the science team. The 1,213 images conclusively show that the planet is a lot less like the Moon than many previously thought, with features unique to this innermost world. The puzzling...

ESA's Cluster mission has, for the first time, observed the extent of the region that triggers magnetic reconnection, and it is much larger than previously thought. This gives future space missions a much better chance of studying it.Space is filled with plasma (a gas composed of ions and electrons, globally neutral) and is threaded by magnetic fields. These magnetic fields store energy which can be released explosively, in a process called magnetic reconnection. This process plays a key role...

It has been 35 years since humans last walked on the moon, but there has been much recent discussion about returning, either for exploration or to stage a mission to Mars. However, there are concerns about potential radiation danger for astronauts during long missions on the lunar surface. A significant part of that danger results from solar storms, which can shoot particles from the sun to Earth at nearly the speed of light and can heat oxygen in the Earth's ionosphere and send it in a...

ESA's Cluster constellation has found that multiple, high-speed beams of electrically charged particles, or ions, are formed on the night-side of near-Earth space and get accelerated towards Earth.These observations are key to understanding how solar material manages to reach the Earth's night-side, to forecast the behaviour of the magnetic environment around our planet, and in turn, to better protect ground and space-based technologies. Different theories were proposed in the 80's and 90's...

With Cluster data, scientists now have evidence that solar outbursts can generate conditions that slingshot matter in Earth's magnetic environment to speeds higher than 1000 km/s.The outburst responsible in a recent study was a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), a massive cloud of charged particles coming from the Sun. The study compares observations from the four satellites of the ESA's Cluster mission with global simulations of the magnetosphere. While the Sun continuously loses a small fraction...

TC-1, one of the two satellites of the CNSA/ESA Double Star mission, was decommissioned on 14 October as its designed orbit lifetime came to an end. The satellite re-entered Earth's atmosphere and turned to dust during its descent.Along with its twin TC-2, TC-1 is the first satellite built and operated by the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA) in cooperation with ESA. Along with its twin and the four Cluster satellites, TC-1 has helped accomplish much during its lifetime. The four...

Pack your bags because Goddard's "suitcase science" is taking off. Coming on the heels of two Lunar Sortie Science Opportunities (LSSO) awards for Goddard are two more, this time in the field of astrophysics. As before, the awards are funded by NASA Headquarters for studies that could result in simple, automated "suitcase science" instrument packages deployed on the lunar surface by astronauts. The first proposal, "Precision Lunar Laser Ranging", is being led by...

NASA's STEREO satellite captured the first images ever of a collision between a solar "hurricane", called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and a comet. The collision caused the complete detachment of the comet's plasma tail. Comets are icy leftovers from the solar system's formation billions of years ago. They usually hang out in the cold, distant regions of the solar system, but occasionally a gravitational tug from a planet, another comet, or even a nearby star sends them into the...

Cluster data has helped provide scientists with a new view of magnetospheric processes, challenging existing theories about magnetic substorms that cause aurorae and perturbations in GPS signals.The onset of magnetic substorms that originate in Earth's magnetosphere has been explained by two competing models: current disruption and near-earth reconnection. Current beliefs have been challenged using data from ESA's Cluster satellites, and CNSA's Double Star, a mission with ESA participation. A...

A rare, timely conjunction of ground-based instrumentation and a dozen satellites has helped scientists better understand how electrons in space can turn into "˜killers'. ESA's Cluster constellation has contributed crucially to the finding."˜Killer' electrons are highly energetic, negatively charged particles found in near-Earth space. They can critically, and even permanently, damage satellites in orbit, including telecommunication satellites, and pose a hazard to astronauts.Several...