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Swales Aerospace Delivers Final Micro-Satellite for NASA's THEMIS Mission |
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BELTSVILLE, Md., June 14, 2006/Satnews Daily/ — Swales Aerospace has delivered the last of five THEMIS micro-satellite spacecraft buses.
Swales said it has successfully completed the delivery of all five spacecraft buses and the satellite dispenser probe carrier. It added that all spacecraft were integrated in Swales' Beltsville, Maryland, facilities and were delivered to the Principal Investigator team at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) under NASA's Medium Explorer (MIDEX) Program. The mission is planned for an October 2006 launch.
The THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) mission is unique in that it is NASA's first scientific research micro-satellite constellation consisting of five identical, high performance satellites flying in the Earth's magnetosphere, a region of the upper atmosphere extending for hundreds of thousands of miles.
The mission will determine the energetic triggering of explosive particle events in geo-space that manifest themselves, in the northern skies, as violent eruptions of the aurora, or northern lights. Each of the five satellites carries a comprehensive suite of electric, magnetic and particle instruments.
“The Swales team persevered under very challenging technical and schedule conditions,” said Dan Mark, Swales vice president for Civil Programs. “Swales' micro-satellite constellation technology validates the last decade's assertion that industry production capacity is crucial to the success of the NASA's Heliophysics roadmap,” he added.
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