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The 2013 Earth-Orbiting Heliophysics Fleet
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- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- View full credits
There've been a few changes since the 2012 Earth-Orbiting Heliophysics Fleet. As of Fall of 2013, here's a tour of the NASA Near-Earth Heliophysics fleet, covering the space from near-Earth orbit out to the orbit of the Moon.
The satellite orbits are color coded for their observing program:
Magenta: TIM (Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere) observations Yellow: solar observations and imagery Cyan: Geospace and magnetosphere Violet: Heliospheric observations
Near-Earth Fleet:
- Hinode: Observes the Sun in multiple wavelengths up to x-rays. SVS page
- RHESSI : Observes the Sun in x-rays and gamma-rays. SVS page
- TIMED: Studies the upper layers (40-110 miles up) of the Earth's atmosphere.
- FAST: Measures particles and fields in regions where aurora form.
- CINDI: Measures interactions of neutral and charged particles in the ionosphere.
- SORCE: Monitors solar intensity across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum.
- AIM: Images and measures noctilucent clouds. SVS page
- Van Allen Probes: Two probes moving along the same orbit esigned to study the impact of space weather on Earth's radiation belts. SVS page
- TWINS: Two Wide-Angle Imaging Neutral-Atom Spectrometers (TWINS) are two probes observing the Earth with neutral atom imagers.
- IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph is designed to take high-resolution spectra and images of the region between the solar photosphere and solar atmosphere.
Geosynchronous Fleet:
- SDO: Solar Dynamics Observatory keeps the Sun under continuous observation at 16 megapixel resolution.
- GOES: The newest GOES satellites include a solar X-ray imager operated by NOAA.
Geospace Fleet:
- Geotail: Conducts measurements of electrons and ions in the Earth's magnetotail.
- Cluster: This is a group of four satellites which fly in formation to measure how particles and fields in the magnetosphere vary in space and time. SVS page
- THEMIS: This is a fleet of three satellites to study how magnetospheric instabilities produce substorms. Two of the original five satellites were moved into lunar orbit to become ARTEMIS. SVS page
- IBEX: The Interstellar Boundary Explorer measures the flux of neutral atoms from the heliopause.
Lunar Orbiting Fleet
- ARTEMIS: Two of the THEMIS satellites were moved into lunar orbit to study the interaction of the Earth's magnetosphere with the Moon.
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, the NASA/Goddard Satellite Situation Center, and Space Track.
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Animator
- Tom Bridgman (Global Science and Technology, Inc.) [Lead]
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
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SSCweb ephemerides (SSCweb)
ID: 538Satellite ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov
See all pages that use this dataset -
Space-Track TLE (Space-Track Two-Line Elements)
ID: 753Satellite ephemerides
This dataset can be found at: http://Space-Track.org
See all pages that use this dataset
Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.