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The Cluster Mission
See
MPS participation.
The Launch
First pair of Cluster satellites successfully launched July 16, 2000.
Second pair of successfully launched August 9, 2000.
See
launch news for launch info and videos.
The Mission
Cluster is an ambitious 4-spacecraft mission to Earth's
magnetosphere and beyond. After more than ten years of planning, constructing,
testing, assembling. it was launched on June 4, 1996, only to be destroyed
less than a minute later when the Ariane 5 launch vehicle failed so spectacularly.
(More on the
disasterous launch.)
 The scientific
importance of the mission and the determination of all the participants
led to a follow-up mission as a replication of the original. Initially
named
Cluster II, it
reverted to the simple designation Cluster once it was
launched mid-2000.
The Mission is now in its final extension; the first of the 4 satellites will reenter
in September 2024, at which time all payload operations on the remaining satellites
will cease. Post-operations (recalibrations, documentation refinement, final archiving)
will continue until March 2026.
The next reentry will occur in November 2025; the last two Clusters will reenter August 2026,
the final end of the Cluster Mission.
Cluster is a cornerstone mission of the European Space Agency.
See the ESA
Cluster home page.
Objectives
The Cluster mission, consisting of four identical spacecraft flying in
formation between 25000 and 125000 km above the Earth, will study the planet's
magnetic field and electric surroundings in three dimensions. In particular,
it will be looking at the effects of the solar wind, the hot wave of energy
produced by the Sun, which buffets Earth's protective magnetosphere. This
wind often breaks through at the poles, producing auroras. Cluster will
examine this phenomenon, along with several others associated with the
solar wind.
The Spacecraft
 Each of the Cluster
spacecraft carries an identical set of 11 instruments. These are designed
to detect electric and magnetic fields, various electric and magnetic waves,
as well as electrons and charged atoms. The satellites fly in a tetrahedral
(triangular pyramid) formation, and the data they collect allow scientists
to build a three-dimensional model of all the processes at work in the
Earth's immediate space environment. This should provide insights into
the influence of the Sun on the Earth environment.
MPS Participation
The MPS is making several contributions to the Cluster Mission:
-
It is taking the lead (Principle Investigator) in the
RAPID
experiment for detecting energetic electrons and ions,
-
It has Co-Investigators on the
CIS
ion spectrometer
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It is responsible for the raw data processing and archiving for the
EDI
Electron Drift Instrument
-
It is involved in the implementation of the
Cluster
Science Data System,
- and hosts the
German Cluster Data Centre.
-
It is responsible for the raw data processing and archiving for the
EDI
Electron Drift Instrument
-
MPS is a major contributor to the
Cluster Science Archive,
(the successor to the Cluster Active Archive, CAA)
delivering the final high-quality data for both RAPID and EDI.
MPS
Cluster publications.
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