Centre d'etude des Environnements Terrestre et Planetaires
10-12, avenue de l'Europe
Teacher-high-school
78140
PARIS, FRANCE
Presentation 1 : None
The CLUSTER mission
Le Contel, O., Canu P., Mottez F., and A. Roux
Title: The CLUSTER mission: How can we know whether a balloon is inflating or moving?
The Earth magnetosphere corresponds to the cavity formed by the interaction of the internal Earth magnetic field and the flux of charged particles delivered by the Sun (the solar wind). The magnetosphere has been explored by satellites for about thirty years. Nowadays, we know that it comprises different regions which can be indentified thanks to their different signatures as the intensity of the magnetic field, the density of the particles, etc … However, these previous missions were based upon single satellite and could not tell us whether the variation of a physical quantity measured onboard spacecraft was due to a moving spatial structure or to a temporal variation. As a picture, it was difficult to distinguish between a balloon which is moving with a fixed size and a balloon fixed in the space but inflating. The CLUSTER mission is formed by four identical satellites moving around the Earth with a tetraedron geometry and one of its most important goal is to remove this difficulty. On the other hand, it provides for the first time a three-dimensional measurement of various physical quantites. We briefly review the main goals of the mission and present some tentative applications to educational activites.