INTERBALL
http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/projekte/interball/index.html

INTERBALL

Space plasma mission

Interball The international Interball mission consists of four spacecraft equipped by an international consortium and launched by the Russian Space Agency. Two of the satellites, called INTERBALL-1, were launched into a high apogee elliptical orbit around the Earth (apogee: 200 000 km) and two (INTERBALL-2) into an excentric polar orbit (apogee: 20 000 km over the northern hemisphere. Both pairs of satellites consist of a Prognoz-type main satellite and a free-flying Magion-type Czech subsatellite. Interball, along with the already launched > GEOTAIL, POLAR, WIND and SOHO, a cornerstone project of the European Space Agency, as well as > EQUATOR-S are all spaceborn contributions to the > International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Science Initiative.
Interball, the tail probes, were launched on August 2, 1995 at 22:00 UT (or 01:00 on August 3, 1995 Moscow Time) from the Russian Plesetzk launch site.

> Science objectives
> MPS contribution
> ASPI
> FGM-1
> Related links
> Interball publications by MPS members
 

Science objectives

High latitude magnetopause observations

Using the highly excentric orbit of Interball the magnetic field measurements of the German fluxgate magnetometer FGM-1 during high latitude magnetopause crossings were analyzed. The strong oscillations, observed during a period of reular solar wind flow (i.e. without pressure pulses etc.) were compared with MHD-simulations of a Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) unstable magnetopause current layer. The surface wave signatures produced by MHD simulations remind the observed ones. This was used as an indication of a KH unstable high-latitude magnetopause.

Magnetotail observations

INTERBALL-1 tail magnetic field observations of the fluxgate magnetometer > FGM-1 were compared with GISMO three-dimensional fully kinetic electromagnetic particle simulations and with > GEOTAIL observations.

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MPS contribution

Interball is an international four-spacecraft mission of the Russian Space Agency in cooperation with space research institutes in Austria, Canada, Finland, France, Germany and Sweden.

The Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung participates as a PI institution in the INTERBALL-1 mission as a member of the Wave-and Field Consortium > ASPI. The ASPI-consortium includes, e.g., the German fluxgate magnetometer > FGM-1 onboard the tail-probe and the fluctuation-device IFP-I.

Based on the corresponding German Space Agency DARA and Max-Planck-Gesellschaft financed hardware contribution and also on the multi-spacecraft mission oriented MPS modeling efforts institute scientists held, additionally, several Co-Investigator functions of the INTERBALL-1 mission.

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Related links

See also the > Interball homepage of the Moscow Space Research Institut for more information about the project.



© 2006, Max-Planck-Institut für
Sonnensystemforschung, Lindau
Jörg Buechner
10-12-2001