Closest Multi-Spacecraft Flying Formation on This Week @NASA – September 23, 2016

Clos­est Mul­ti-Space­craft Fly­ing For­ma­tion on This Week @NASA – Sep­tem­ber 23, 2016



NASA,Magnetospheric Multiscale,This Week @NASA



The four space­craft orbit­ing Earth in for­ma­tion as part of NASA’s Mag­ne­tos­pher­ic Mul­ti­scale, or MMS, mis­sion achieved a new record recent­ly when the space between them was decreased from just over six miles to only four-and-a-half miles. This is the clos­est sep­a­ra­tion ever of any mul­ti-space­craft for­ma­tion. The team of space­craft fly in a pyra­mid shape, called a tetra­he­dron, which enables MMS to cap­ture three-dimen­sion­al obser­va­tions of mag­net­ic recon­nec­tion – a mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­e­non, dur­ing which mag­net­ic fields expe­ri­ence explo­sive inter­ac­tions. The clos­er for­ma­tion will allow the space­craft to mea­sure mag­net­ic recon­nec­tion at small­er scales, help­ing sci­en­tists to bet­ter under­stand it. Also, Des­ti­na­tion Mars Exhib­it, Orbital ATK Tar­gets Launch Win­dow, NASA-devel­oped Tech­nol­o­gy Saves Pilot’s Life, and Com­bined Fed­er­al Cam­paign Underway!



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