MMS Phase 2b: Transitioning to Magnetosphere Science on the Darkside

  • Released Thursday, February 9, 2017
  • Updated Thursday, March 23, 2017 at 12:07PM
  • ID: 4549

Completing its study of magnetic reconnection at the boundary between Earth and the sun, the MMS spacecraft fleet transitions its orbit to studying magnetospheric events near the shadow of Earth.

Current scheduled maneuver times (subject to change) are:
  • February 1, 2017: Resize perigee (the point on the orbit closest to Earth) to 60km

  • February 9, 2017: First apogee (point on the orbit farthest from Earth) raising maneuver

  • April 8, 2017: Final apogee raising maneuver

  • April 16, 2017: Perigee resizing

  • April 26, 2017: Reinitializing formation flying

The magnetosphere boundary represents a point of balance between the pressure of the solar wind passing Earth and the outward magnetic pressure of Earth's magnetic field. The location in this visualization is representative at may not accurately reflect the position relative to the spacecraft at any given future time.
No description available.

MMS formation flying mode passing across the dayside magnetopause.

No description available.

Apogee-raising maneuvers begin.

No description available.

The individual spacecraft spread out along the orbit.

No description available.

More apogee raising maneuvers.

No description available.

Giving each other lots of room...

No description available.

Finishing up apogee-raising boosts.

No description available.

Moving back into formation flying.



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio


Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

SPICE Ephemerides (A.K.A. SPICE Ephemerides)
Ephemeris | NASA/JPL

Satellite and planetary ephemerides

See more visualizations using this data set

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.



You may also like...

Loading recommendations...