Feb 17 2007
From The Space Library
NASA launched its Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station]] in Florida at 6:01 p.m. (EST), marking the first time NASA had launched a five-satellite constellation aboard a single rocket. NASA had designed the mission to uncover the catalyst of geomagnetic substorms, the atmospheric events visible in the Northern Hemisphere as a sudden brightening of the aurora borealis. Scientists hoped that the mission’s findings would help protect humans and commercial satellites in space from the effects of particle radiation. NASA had planned the mission to last two years, during which time the five identical satellites would collect data, attempting to achieve what no previous single-satellite mission had been able to do—to pinpoint when and where substorms begin.
NASA, “NASA’s THEMIS Mission Launches To Study Geomagnetic Substorms,” news release 07-47, 17 February 2007, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2007/feb/HQ_0747_THEMIS_Postlaunch.html (accessed 14 October 2007).
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