Journal article
Special issue “Swarm science results after 2 years in space”
National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark1
Geomagnetism, National Space Institute, Technical University of Denmark2
Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - German Research Centre for Geosciences3
Directorate of Earth Observation Programmes4
Université Paris Cité5
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich6
Swarm is a three-satellite constellation mission launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) on 22 November2013. It consists of three identical spacecraft, two of which (Swarm Alpha and Swarm Charlie) are flying almost side-by-side in polar orbits at lower altitude (about 470 km in September 2016) with an East-West separation of 1.4º in longitude corresponding to 155 km at the equator.
The third satellite (Swarm Bravo) is in a slightly higher orbit (about 520 km altitude in September2016). Each of the three satellites carry a magnetometry package (consisting of absolute scalar magnetometer,fluxgate vector magnetometer, and star imager) for measuring the direction and strength of the magnetic field,and instruments to measure plasma and electric field parameters as well as gravitational acceleration.
Time and position are provided by on-board GPS. The configuration of the various instruments on each of the three Swarm spacecraft is shown in Fig. 1. More information about the mission can be found at http://earth.esa.int/swarm.
| Language: | English |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Springer Berlin Heidelberg |
| Year: | 2016 |
| Pages: | 1-3 |
| ISSN: | 18805981 and 13438832 |
| Types: | Journal article |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s40623-016-0546-6 |
| ORCIDs: | Olsen, Nils |
