Cluster Status Report - February 2006
Operations and Archiving
JSOC and ESOC operations are continuing nominally. Work is progressing for the switch from VILSPA to Perth ground station starting early 2006. The data return from September 2005 to mid November 2005 was on average 99.8%.
The Cluster active Archive (CAA) is in beta testing phase since 26 September. Up to now, 63 software problems have been reported of which 19 are still open but none of them are critical; these are mostly related to the ingestion processes. The CAA will be opened on 1 February 2006. A new activity on cross-calibration between different instruments has been started. The first meeting was held in September and the next one will be in January 2006.
Science Highlights
A new multi-spacecraft method to estimate the magnetic reconnection rate has been developed and applied to the Cluster data. This requires at least two spacecraft in the reconnection layer at the same time. The results from one magnetopause crossing by Cluster showed that the reconnection rate is significantly lower than the rate obtained from previous observations. This finding could come from the fact that a certain type of reconnection called "component reconnection" was occurring at that time.