Earth’s Heliophysics fleet 2017 (4K)

Earth’s Heliophysics fleet: satellites and spacecrafts studying Sun and its effects on space Near-Earth Fleet: Hinode: Observes the Sun in multiple wavelengths up to x-rays. RHESSI : Observes the Sun in x-rays and gamma-rays. TIMED: Studies the upper layers (40-110 miles up) of Earth's atmosphere. SORCE: Monitors solar intensity across a broad range of the electromagnetic spectrum. AIM: Images and measures noctilucent clouds. Van Allen Probes: Two probes moving along the same orbit designed to study the impact of space weather on Earth's radiation belts. TWINS: Two Wide-Angle Imaging Neutral-Atom Spectrometers are two probes observing the Earth with neutral atom imagers. IRIS: Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph is designed to take high-resolution spectra and images of the region between the solar photosphere and solar atmosphere. Geosynchronous Fleet: SDO: Solar Dynamics Observatory keeps the Sun under continuous observation at 16 megapixel resolution. Geospace Fleet: Geotail: Conducts measurements of electrons and ions in the Earth's magnetotail. Magnetospheric Multi-scale (MMS): This is a group of four satellites which fly in formation to measure how particles and fields in the magnetosphere vary in space and time. THEMIS: This is a fleet of three satellites to study how magnetospheric instabilities produce substorms. Two of the original five satellites were moved into lunar orbit to become ARTEMIS. IBEX: The Interstellar Boundary Explorer measures the flux of neutral atoms from the heliopause. Lunar Orbiting Fleet: ARTEMIS: Two of the THEMIS satellites were moved into lunar orbit to study the interaction of the Earth's magnetosphere with the Moon. Sun-Earth Lagrange Point One Fleet: SOHO: Studies the Sun with cameras and a multitude of other instruments. ACE: Measures the composition and characteristics of the solar wind. Wind: Measures particle flows and fields in the solar wind. Solar Orbiting Fleet: STEREO-A & STEREO-B: The two STEREO spaceraft orbit the Sun in roughly the same orbit as Earth. There have been some communications problems with STEREO-B since 2014. Interstellar Fleet: Voyager 1 & Voyager 2: The two Voyager spaceraft orbit originally performed flybys of the outer planets of the solar system but continued to operate. They are now the most distant monitors of the plasma in the space between the stars. Credit: NASA Scientific Visualization Studio