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Double Star Status Report - November 2006

Double Star Status Report - November 2006

Mission StatusThe two spacecraft and the instruments are operating nominally. TC-2 has started the eclipse season and TC-1 will follow in November. The nominal mission ends at the end of December 2006 but a 2nd extension is being proposed from 1 January 2007 to October 2007 (10 months). On 10 October 2007, TC-1 will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and operations on this spacecraft will be finished.

Operations and Archiving

The European Payload Operation System (EPOS) co-ordinates the operations for the seven European instruments on TC-1 and TC-2 and is running smoothly. Data are acquired using the VILSPA 2 ground station for 3.8 h/day over an average of two passes per day. The availability of the ground station between January and July 2006 was above 99%.

Quick look plots containing most instruments are publicly available 3-4 days after data acquisition. Processed and PI validated physical parameters from all instruments are available from February 2004 up to the end of March 2006.

Science Highlights

A study on pulsed magnetic reconnection was published in Annales Geophysicae using Double Star and Cluster data. It was shown that newly reconnected flux tubes, called flux transfer events, are observed in the equatorial plane by Double Star and at higher latitude by Cluster. This showed that the reconnection site was at least extended over 2 h in local time. Furthermore Double Star could detect these events during one of the longest observations, about 8 hours. A numerical simulation based on a global MagnetoHydroDynamic (MHD) model was run and reproduced fairly well this event.

Editor's note
This report was prepared on 13 October 2006, and presented to SPC on 7-8 November 2006.

Last Update: 1 September 2019
14-Oct-2024 09:13 UT

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