European Space Agency’s SWARM mission

Three Satellite SWARM Constellation Lofted in Sky

European Space Agency’s SWARM constellation took off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia on Nov 22, 2013 on a four year planned mission to study Earth’s magnetic field. Aboard the Rokot/Breeze-KM, a Russian rocket launcher, the trio of satellites was placed in the near-polar circular orbit at an altitude of 490 km. European Space Operation Centre in Darmstadt, Germany will control all the three identical satellites. Once their scientific payload is verified during the commissioning phase which will last the next three months, they will take up their respective orbits. The upper satellite will orbit at the equator at an altitude of 530 and the lower two satellites, staying in formation side by side, will fly at an initial altitude of 460 km, approximately 150 km (10 seconds) apart.

 

The launch’s success was confirmed after receipt of signals from two satellites at the Kiruna ground station in Sweden and at Svalbard chain of islands, the northernmost part of Norway, from the third one.

 

More about Swarm: The SWARM mission succeeds the previous three successful ventures of the ESA, viz. CryoSat, GOCE and SMOS satellites, all of which being Earth observers have contributed heaps of data to our knowledge base on Earth’s parameters, surrounding environment, etc. It is actually the first member of ESA’s Earth Explorer Series. The payload consists of high precision and sophisticated instruments such as vector and scalar magnetometers, accelerometer, Laser Range Reflector, Electric Field Instrument, etc. The satellites will use long booms to gather data, which will fan out after the launch. The launch services were provided by Eurockot while the three orbiters were built by Astrium (Germany and UK) as per their contracts with the ESA. Eurockot is a commercial space launch service provider, established in 1995 which launches from its dedicated launch facilities at the Plesetsk Cosmodrome while Astrium was a former aerospace subsidiary of the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS) as the EADS now has reorganised itself as the Airbus Group.

 

Objective of the Mission: The mission aims at comprehensively studying Earth’s magnetic cover, its generation, gradual apparent weakening, and its whereabouts. Beginning from as deep locations as earth’s core, it will probe even Earth’s upper atmospheric layers. It will try to establish a link between the motion of molten iron inside Earth’s outer core and the gravitational field which is supposed to be generated by the convection of the molten matter. It will also study salt water ocean currents, charged higher atmospheric layers acting closely with the solar wind (a stream of charged particles coming from the sun) with reference to their impact over earth’s magnetic field.

 

Pole Reversal Phenomenon: This process has occurred in past too and is known to take long time periods. The weakening of the field of gravity around us points in the similar direction. According to this, the polarity of north and south poles would invert in thousands of years but in the meantime, as the field weakens, disruptions are likely to occur in electric grid systems on Earth, satellites revolving around it, and the impact of which would be pronounced over the entire biosphere. An understanding of this would be easier with the precious information collated with this help of this mission.

 

The surveillance and data delivered by this constellation are of significance to the scientists keeping in view the fact that Earth’s gravitational field in not merely an energy bubble around us, but it is also a shield which deflects and entraps many charged particles heading towards earth from the sun and the core space and saves life forms from their damaging effects. The data will help the scientific community to trace the factors leading to generation and subsequent changes in Earth’s magnetic field. This will further advance their ability to forecast and monitor geological and surrounding environmental changes. With the satellites already entering their commissioning phase (when the instruments are switched on and calibrated) hopes for accurate high end data have gone higher and an excellent mission is being eyed at.