Geotail

A 30-year-old NASA-Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission has come to an end with the closing of operations on the Geotail satellite. Launched in July 1992, Geotail was designed to study the Earth’s magnetosphere. This is the region around Earth where particles are affected by our planet’s magnetic field. It’s important for our well-being as it protects us from dangerous space radiation. As this radiation comes primarily in the form of solar wind from the sun, the magnetosphere isn’t a round bubble —…

After a long journey of 30 years, NASA’s Geotail satellite's Mission has ended. Here’s why. Back on July 24, 1992, NASA had launched the Geotail Satellite Mission to gather a dataset on the structure and dynamics of the magnetosphere, Earth's protective magnetic bubble. However, it is interesting to note that the satellite was originally planned for a four-year run, but thanks to its high-quality data return, the mission was extended several times in the past. It even contributed to over thousands of scientific…

An artist’s depiction of the ICON spacecraft.Illustration: NASAA three-year-old NASA satellite lost touch with ground controllers two weeks ago and is now wandering through low Earth orbit without supervision. Sadly, the space agency fears the worst. NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission has not communicated with ground stations since November 25 due to some sort of glitch the space agency is yet to identify, NASA wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. The spacecraft is equipped with an onboard command loss…

Artist’s illustration of NASA’s GeoCarb mission.Illustration: NASA/Lockheed Martin/University of OklahomaCiting cost overruns, NASA has made the decision to terminate the GeoCarb mission, a satellite that would’ve measured greenhouse gas emissions above the Americas. The space agency will now consider newer, alternative ways of monitoring climate-impacting pollution.“Decisions like this are difficult, but NASA is dedicated to making careful choices with the resources provided by the people of the United States,” Thomas…

An illustration of the Geotail spacecraft.Illustration: JAXAAn irreparable software glitch has put an end to Geotail, a JAXA-NASA joint mission. The satellite observed Earth’s magnetosphere for more than 30 years within an extremely elliptical orbit, but the mission has officially been terminated, according to JAXA’s Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS).Geotail launched on July 24, 1992, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida as a joint mission ofNASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency…

An illustration of the Geotail spacecraft.Illustration: NASAFor the past 30 years, Geotail has been sailing through the magnetic envelope that surrounds Earth to study this region of our atmosphere. But the long-running mission may be coming to an end as NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency recently discovered that the spacecraft’s last remaining data recorder has failed.The data recorder malfunctioned on June 28, leaving the spacecraft with no other means to collect science data as it journeys through the…

An artist’s concept of the Geotail spacecraft. The Geotail spacecraft was designed and built by ISAS and was launched on July 24, 1992. After fulfilling Its original objective of studying the dynamics of the Earth’s magnetotail over a wide range of distances, extending from the near-Earth region, roughly eight Earth radii (Re) from the Earth to the distant tail about two hundred Re, its orbit was changed. Since February 1995, Geotail has been in an elliptical nine-by-thirty Re orbit where it has provided data on most…