{"id":16542,"date":"2015-02-18T23:41:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T15:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/magnetic-field-laboratory-being-readied-for-launch\/"},"modified":"2015-02-18T23:41:18","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T15:41:18","slug":"magnetic-field-laboratory-being-readied-for-launch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/magnetic-field-laboratory-being-readied-for-launch\/","title":{"rendered":"Magnetic field laboratory being readied for launch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Credit:
Credit: Walter Scriptunas II<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TITUSVILLE \u2014 A stack of four satellites, each one carrying 25 science sensors and together will perfect the art of formation flying, is being packaged inside an Atlas 5 rocket nose cone in preparation for mounting atop the booster next week.<\/p>\n

The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, will explore explosions in the Earth\u2019s magnetic field after its March 12 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the culmination of hundreds of people\u2019s work. It\u2019s been a decade of focus for the science team finally coming to fruition. We\u2019re very anxious to launch,\u201d said Craig Tooley. the MMS project manager from NASA-Goddard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe flow has gone very, very smooth,\u201d Tooley added.<\/p>\n

Now fueled with hydrazine and mated in a \u201csuper stack\u201d for launch, crews from United Launch Alliance are preparing to encapsulate the satellites on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are stacked, we are fueled, we\u2019re ready to go,\u201d said Brent Robertson, MMS deputy project manager at NASA-Goddard.<\/p>\n

Given the towering height of the stack, the extra-extended payload fairing will be used for this launch to enclose the satellites during the climb through Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n

One last chore before sealing up the spacecraft for liftoff will see protective covers removed from the satellites.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s actually quite an involved process. There\u2019s over 700 items that have to be removed from the spacecraft before we fly. Of course, we want to very, very careful to make sure we don\u2019t miss anything. That activity will take the next four days,\u201d Robertson said.<\/p>\n

\"Credit:
Credit: Walter Scriptunas II<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Next, the payload will be transported by road from the commercial Astrotech processing campus in Titusville to the Air Force station at Cape Canaveral to join the awaiting Atlas 5 rocket. The move is planned for next Thursday, Feb. 26.<\/p>\n

The Atlas 5, flying in the 421 configuration, will feature a pair of strap-on solid motors to lift MMS into a highly elliptical orbit around the Earth. The orbit will be shaped by two firings of the Centaur upper stage.<\/p>\n

It will be the 53rd Atlas 5 flight and the 12th for NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you take an MMS with its booms out, it\u2019s about the same size as a baseball diamond,\u201d said Tooley.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have them spinning at three RPM with these long wires, and we have to carefully fire our rockets to maneuver them to adjust the attitude and the orbit. We have four of them in very similar but different orbits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The flight dynamics is the most challenging project Goddard has ever flown, Tooley said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a pretty difficult mission. That is why it was built in-house at Goddard. Most missions have a contractor.\u201d<\/p>\n

The mission will study magnetic reconnections, which happens when magnetic field lines break and reconfigure, releasing an explosive burst of energy. As the formation-flying satellites loop around Earth, they will measure in three dimensions the characteristics of magnetic reconnections.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really a flying laboratory,\u201d Tooley said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Credit: Walter Scriptunas II TITUSVILLE \u2014 A stack of four satellites, each one carrying 25 science sensors and together will perfect the art of formation flying, is being packaged inside an Atlas 5 rocket nose cone in preparation for mounting atop the booster next week. The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, or MMS, will explore explosions in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2190,4116,1860,4117],"class_list":["post-16542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-astrotech","tag-av-053","tag-heliophysics","tag-mms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16542"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}