Double Star: Mission, Instruments and Joint Observations
Publication date: 04 December 2009
Authors: Dunlop, M.W. et al.
Page: 331-346
Year: 2009
Copyright: Springer
In the book "The Cluster Active Archive - Studying the Earth's Space Plasma Environment", Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, H. Laakso et al. (eds.), ISBN 978-90-481-3498-4 (Print) 978-90-481-3499-1 (Online), Springer, 2010
The Chinese National Space Agency (CNSA) Double Star (DSP) spacecraft, TC-1 and TC-2 were launched in December 2003 and July 2004 into near equatorial and polar orbits respectively. During more than 3 years of operations they have maintained a close phasing with the ESA four-spacecraft mission to produce the first, well coordinated multi-scale measurements, sampling phenomena with five and six spacecraft. In this short paper we give a brief review of the DSP mission and show its joint capability with Cluster by showing examples of use of some early and more recent analysis techniques and their application to (more than) four spacecraft. We highlight a selection of some co-ordinated events, focussing on dayside phenomena, but also with a brief discussion of a tail event. Other reviews in this special issue will deal more completely with coverage of the other regions of the magnetosphere.
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