Maps
Webmail
Home > About us > Media > Archived news > 2020 > The Cluster mission turns 20 years
The Cluster mission turns 20 years
All the versions of this article: [English] [français]
July 16, 2020 marks the 20th anniversary of the launch of the first pair of this constellation of 4 satellites. Carried out by a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Baikonur and followed with anxiety by a whole scientific community, the placement of satellites 2 and 3 in orbit was successful, a step that the 4 original satellites never reached, destroyed on June 6, 1996, a few seconds after their takeoff, in the explosion of their Ariane 5 rocket. The launch, on August 9, of the second pair - satellites 1 and 4-, would finally mark the effective start of the mission. A retrospectively eventful second launch, because an error in filling the tanks of the Soyuz rocket resulted in a lack of 100 m / s in the momentum communicated by its first 3 stages. Fortunately, this defect was going to be partially compensated by the upper stage Fregat, but the orbit reached was still 1000 km less than the target orbit. The satellites ample maneuvering capabilities will make it easy to reach the planned final orbit, marking the start of the first constellation aimed at the 3D study of small-scale structures of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Starting in February 2001, the scientific mission was planned to last 2 years, a period that the scientists hoped to continue for two or 3 more years. In fact, the mission will span more than two decades. The changes in orbits will lead this powerful tool to tackle unthinkable studies during the initial definition of the mission. The ingenuity of the ESOC teams in charge of operations will make it possible to use the satellite resources still available to vary the orbit and the shape of the constellation, to modify the inter-satellite distances (up to less than 3 km), operate without operational batteries and with a minimum of propellant.
Of course, satellites and instruments have aged, and like all old people, they can occasionally suffer from some ailments. But the quality and quantity of data (greater than that at the start of the mission) are still very high, ensuring studies of regions and mechanisms that the project designers could not dream of.
To celebrate this 20th anniversary and recall the main stages and major discoveries of this mission, a Workshop, bringing together the actors of this success, was scheduled for September 2020 at ESOC. It could not be maintained following the travel restrictions imposed by the CoVid-19 pandemic. It is simply postponed for a year, to September 2021.
Cluster mission on the web:
- Cluster’s 20 years of studying Earth’s magnetosphere (official news) : http://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cluster/Cluster_s_20_years_of_studying_Earth_s_magnetosphere
- Cluster mission: https://sci.esa.int/web/cluster
- Some key discoveries of Cluster : https://sci.esa.int/web/cluster/-/59954-understanding-earth-what-the-cluster-mission-has-taught-us-so-far
- How the ESOC team manage to keep flying for more than 20 years a mission designed for 2: https://www.theregister.com/2020/04/20/esa_space_extenders_cluster/
- Cluster in 3D : http://aldata.es/cluster_15july/index.html
Also in this section :
- A paper by the low-temperature plasma team selected for the cover page of the journal “Physics of Plasmas“
- Inna Orel defended her PhD thesis "Measurements of electric field and dissociated species in nanosecond discharges for kinetic and biological applications"
- Probing the reaction pathways in electrical discharges in oxygen: Time-resolved Cavity Ringdown Spectroscopy
- The thesis by Giulia Cozzani, former PhD student at LPP, is published in the collection Springer Theses with the distinction "Recognizing outstanding PhD research"
- Make tokamak plasmas rotate by small axisymmetric magnetic disturbances
- Marlous Hofmans has defended her PhD on "Experimental characterization of helium plasma jets”
- Alejandro Alvarez Laguna has been recruited as Researcher by the CNRS to work in the low-temperature plasma team at the LPP
- Thomas Charoy defended his PhD on "Numerical study of electron transport in Hall thrusters"
- Flight model of the search coil magnetometer of the JUICE mission delivered to ESA
- Audrey Chatain defended her PhD on "Aerosols – plasma interaction in Titan’s ionosphere"
- Florian Marmuse defended his PhD "Iodine plasmas: experimental and numerical studies. Application to electric propulsion.”
- The charged dust at Saturn is making its equatorial ionosphere much more conductive!
- Jupiter’s moon Europa: New evidence of watery plumes
- New and efficient pathways for N2 dissociation using high energy density low-temperature plasmas
- Opening of applications for the Master M2 of Physics of Plasmas and Fusion
- Fundamental data for CO2 dissociation determined experimentally at LPP
- The LPP at the time of confinement
- Successful Solar Orbiter launch
- Space plasmas turbulence : first in-situ estimation of the dissipation rate at sub-ion scales
- A new theory to explain light emission patterns in electrical glow discharges
