Double Star
Cluster and Double Star
ESA Director General Antonio Rodotà and Luan Enjie, Administrator of the Chinese National Space Agency, signing an agreement for cooperation on Double Star
On 9 July 2001, an historic agreement to develop a joint mission - known as `Double Star' - was signed at ESA Headquarters in Paris by the ESA Director General, Antonio Rodotà, and Luan Enjie, Administrator of the Chinese National Space Administration (CNSA).
Double Star will follow in the footsteps of ESA's groundbreaking Cluster mission by studying the effects of the Sun on the Earth's environment. Conducting joint studies with Cluster and Double Star should increase the overall scientific return from both missions.
A key aspect of ESA's participation in the Double Star project is the inclusion of 10 instruments, nine of which are identical to those currently flying on the four Cluster spacecraft. A further eight experiments will be provided by Chinese institutes.
"We hope it will be possible to make co-ordinated measurements with both Cluster and Double Star," said Cluster project scientist Philippe Escoubet. "For example, we would hope to carry out a joint exploration of the magnetotail, a region where storms of high energy particles are generated. When these particles reach Earth, they can cause power cuts, damage satellites and disrupt communications."
Six of the eleven Cluster principal investigators have agreed to provide flight spares or duplicates of the experiments that are currently revolutionising our understanding of near-Earth space. This reuse of Cluster instruments has a number of advantages for both European and Chinese scientists.
"By flying experiments identical to those on Cluster, we can reduce costs and development time," explained Alberto Gianolio, ESA project manager for Double Star. "This will minimise risk and help us to ensure that we are able to meet the spacecraft development schedule."
ESA has agreed to contribute 8 million Euro to the Double Star programme. This funding will be used for refurbishment and pre-integration of the European instruments, acquisition of data for 4 hours per day and coordination of scientific operations.
The first European experiments to be flown on Chinese satellites are:
- Active Spacecraft Control (ASPOC) - 1 instrument (DSP-1 only)
- Hot Ion Analyser (HIA), part of the CIS instrument on Cluster - 1 instrument (DSP-1 only)
- Fluxgate Magnetometer (FGM) - 2 instruments (DSP-1 and 2)
- Plasma Electron and Current Experiment (PEACE) - 2 instruments (DSP-1 and 2)
- Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Field Fluctuations (STAFF) - 1 instrument (DSP-1 only)
- Energetic Particle Spectrometer (EPS), a new version of the RAPID experiment on Cluster - 2 instruments (DSP-1 and 2). The second EPS for the Polar satellite is financed by China but built by IDA, Braunschweig, Germany.
- Neutral Atom Detection Unit (NUADU), based on an instrument flying on ESA's Mars Express mission - 1 instrument (DSP-1 only)
Data will be relayed to the ESA ground station at Villafranca (Spain) and the Chinese ground stations in Beijing and Shanghai.