Dec 12 1979
From The Space Library
NASA announced that it would ask scientists to propose experiments for a satellite-measurements program called OPEN (origins of plasmas in Earth's neighborhood) that would attempt for the first time to explain collective behavior of components of the geospace system: the interplanetary medium near Earth, magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere.
Previous programs detected extensive interaction among all geospace components. The new mission would use a minimum of four spacecraft in widely different orbits in key regions of space for measurement and remote sensing of electromagnetic radiation, fields and particles, and plasmas (electrified matter) and defining the flow of mass, momentum, and energy through the solar wind and electrified environment near Earth. Launched during a year in the mid-1980s by the Shuttle, each spacecraft would be capable of significant orbit changes over a four-year lifetime to permit observing a vast volume of space. GSFC would manage the project. (NASA Release 79-173)
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