Aug 21 1996
From The Space Library
NASA launched its Fast Auroral snapshot (FAST) Explorer from a test range near Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Engineers had designed the FAST vehicle to travel about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) above Earth, measuring energetic particles, and magnetic and electric fields, at high altitudes where auroras form, to explore the "physical processes that produce aurora borealis and aurora australis." NASA's Small Explorer Project, tasked with providing frequent and low-cost research missions for astrophysics investigations, had carried out the FAST mission as the second in a series of five missions.
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