The mission will help scientists understand magnetic reconnection—when activity from the Sun interacts with Earth’s magnetic field—and its effects in Earth’s atmosphere. View the full animation on the Earth Imaging Journal homepage at www.eijournal.com.
NASA’s TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) now is targeting no earlier than summer 2025 for launch in order to give the mission spacecraft team additional time to prepare.
The mission is a pair of satellites that will study how the solar wind—the continuous stream of ionized particles escaping the Sun and pouring out into space—interacts with and enters Earth’s magnetosphere, the region around Earth dominated by our planet’s magnetic field. Researching this interaction is critical for understanding and eventually predicting how energy from our Sun transfers into our planet and potentially impacts space- and ground-based assets.
