NEW YORK: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) streaked a United Launch Alliance Atlas V-421 rocket into the space, launching four NASA satellites into the Earth’s orbit.
The four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecrafts are positioned in the orbit to study a phenomenon that is catalyst for the most gigantic explosions in our solar system, called magnetic reconnection.
Magnetic reconnection occurs when magnetic fields connect, disconnect and reconfigure explosively, releasing bursts of energy that can reach the order of billions of megatons of trinitrotoluene (commonly known as TNT).
The spacecraft, launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida has successfully deployed from the rocket’s upper stage sequentially after reaching the orbit. The scientists and engineers at NASA plan to spend next several weeks on deploying booms and antennas on the spacecraft and testing all the instruments whereas the observations are expected to begin in early September, 2015.
The mission will provide the first three-dimensional views of reconnection occurring in the magnetosphere which is the most protective magnetic space environment of the Earth. The mission will help the scientists to understand the magnetic reconnection and an insight to the events that can disturb the modern technological systems.
Magnetospheric Multiscale is the fourth mission in the NASA’s Solar Terrestrial Probes Programme.
