ISTP |
News
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April 1998
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WIND Petal Orbit 1 WIND Petal Orbit 2 WIND Extended Mission |
WIND Spacecraft to Begin Petal
Orbits After returning from several months at the L1 Langrangian point--the point where the gravitational and centrifugal pull of the Sun and Earth cancel each other--ISTP's Wind spacecraft will soon make two passes by the Moon. Having spent the past few months cross-calibrating its instruments with those from the ACE spacecraft, Wind will now begin a six-month series of “petal” orbits that will take it out of the ecliptic plane. Starting in October 1998, Wind will fly in an orbit that brings it as close as 10 Earth radii (about 63,000 km) and as far as 80 Earth radii from our planet. More importantly, the orbit will take Wind at an angle of 60 degrees from the ecliptic plane--the plane of Earth and most of the planets. Wind's trips above and below the ecliptic will allow the spacecraft to sample regions of interplanetary space and of the magnetosphere that have never before been studied. |
ISTP Conducts Successful Workshop
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Online CME Poster |
New Poster Conveys Excitement,
Relevance of the Sun-Earth Connection ISTP has created a new 22" by 34" poster for high school students and adult science buffs. The poster highlights the dynamic, electric connection between Sun and Earth by using more than two dozen images (front & back), a magazine-length article on space weather, and a CME tracking exercise. 28,000 copies of "Storms from the Sun" are now being produced for distribution at the April meeting of the National Science Teachers Association and other meetings. It will also be available through NASA Educator Resource Centers. A Spanish-language version of the poster will be produced later this year. |