TRACERS: SpaceX Launches Satellites To Protect Earth From Effects Of Solar Wind Surges

SpaceX Falcon 9 launched NASA's TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) mission on July 23, at 1813 UTC from California's Vandenberg Space Force Base. TRACERS consists of twin satellites designed to study how surges in the solar wind trigger magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetosphere.

This reconnection process can lead to auroras and geomagnetic storms, and the TRACERS satellites will provide insights into how these phenomena occur.

By having two satellites in close proximity to one another, TRACERS will be able to see how areas of Earth's magnetic field that are undergoing reconnection — the snapping and recombining of field lines — change over short time frames. This reconnection happens as activity between the sun's solar wind (a continual stream of charged particles from our star) occasionally moves around denser patches stemming from coronal mass ejections. Meanwhile, Earth's magnetic field waxes and wanes during this process.

Also on board the Falcon 9 today are two private spacecraft, called LIDE and Skykraft 4, and three additional NASA-related payloads.

One of these NASA-related payloads is the Athena EPIC (Economical Payload Integration Cost) SmallSat, which will demonstrate a new way of more efficiently placing remote-sensing (or rather, Earth-observing) instruments into orbit.

Another NASA-related payload is the Polylingual Experimental Terminal, which is a new technology that will demonstrate how spacecraft can roam between communication networks in space, improving satellite connectivity.

Finally, a cubesat called the Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss (REAL) mission will explore how high-energy particles in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts are scattered into the atmosphere, with the aim of eventually mimicking this natural scattering to remove potentially harmful particles from getting in the way of satellites and damaging their circuitry.

The Falcon 9's first stage(B1081) came back for a landing at Vandenberg just under eight minutes after liftoff as planned. It was the 16th mission for this particular booster, according to SpaceX. B1081 previously supported 15 missions: Crew-7, CRS-29, PACE, Transporter-10, EarthCARE, NROL-186, Transporter-13 and 8 Starlink missions.

The rocket's upper stage, meanwhile, continued hauling TRACERS and the other ride-along payloads to low Earth orbit, targeting an altitude of 590 kilometers.

The payloads were deployed during a 50-minute stretch that began about 55 minutes after Falcon 9 liftoff.