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The 2015 Earth-Orbiting Heliophysics Fleet
- Visualizations by:
- Tom Bridgman
- View full credits
Movie showing the heliosphysics missions from near Earth orbit out to the orbit of the Moon.
This video is also available on our YouTube channel.
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.
- 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 designed 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.
Geospace Fleet:
- Geotail: Conducts measurements of electrons and ions in the Earth's magnetotail.
- Magnetospheric Multi-scale (MMS): 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.
Major changes with earlier versions:
- MMS added
- GOES satellites removed
- Cluster satellites removed
- Camera moves around the night-side of Earth .
Credits
Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio, the NASA/Goddard Satellite Situation Center, and Space Track.
Animator
- Tom Bridgman (GST) [Lead]
Producers
- Genna Duberstein (ADNET)
- Scott Wiessinger (KBRwyle)
Missions
This visualization is related to the following missions:Series
This visualization can be found in the following series:Datasets used in this visualization
Space-Track TLE (A.K.A. Space-Track Two-Line Elements)
Satellite ephemerides
Dataset can be found at: http://Space-Track.org
See more visualizations using this data setSSCweb ephemerides (A.K.A. SSCweb)
Satellite ephemerides
Dataset can be found at: http://sscweb.gsfc.nasa.gov
See more visualizations using this data setNote: 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.