NASA (Photo : Reuters/Carlos Barria)
NASA launched a Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft on board an Atlas 5 rocket on March 12 that lifted off at 10:44 p.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The Magnetospheric Multiscale or MMS has a budget of 1.1 billion dollars designed to investigate and understand the phenomenon called "Magnetic Reconnection". With the magnetic field lines break apart and reconnect, it resulted in the speeding up of charged particles into space at a speed reaching to 300,000 km per second, described by NASA.
Experts said that the best example of this scenario can be compared to the sun's solar flare that produces energy as powerful as the explosion of 1 million atomic bombs.
The MMS mission will conduct a definitive experimentation in space, allowing scientist to know better about the phenomenon and how to harness such energy for practical applications, said by lead researcher Jim Burch during the pre-launched a press conference as reported by Yahoo News.
Burch further told reporters that the understanding of magnetic reconnection may help in the prediction of dangerous solar storms that can knock out power grids and disrupt satellite, radio and GPS signals on Earth. This scientific research is good to last for 2 years.
Lockheed Martin and Boeing formed a partnership called United Launch Alliance, according to Customs Today, and built the 20 story high Atlas 5 rocket and launched the same at Cape Canaveral carrying the MMS satellite into space to fly directly into the reconnection zones 70,811 to 152,888 km above Earth's surface and will record what happens when magnetic field lines realign.
Sitting atop the Atlas 5 rocket are four similar satellites that will fly in a pyramid pattern above the Earth. Each satellite carries 25 sensors to record split-seconds events during the Earth's Magnetic Reconnections. Data will be combined to make 3D maps of the magnetic reconnection processes.
Two hours after the liftoff, the four satellites were put into their initial orbit.
