THEMIS

Mission

Kind: Magnetospheric research

State: Successful

Place: Other

Operator: NASA

Date

Start:

Duration: elapsed: 13 years, 8 months and 22 days

Mission Ending

"Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending." - Jim Henson

Rocket

Rocket: Delta II 7925-10C

Kind: NASA

Manufacturer: Swales Aerospace

Mass: 630 kilograms (1,390 lb)

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral SLC-17B

Flyby

"Requesting permission for flyby." Maverick - Top Gun

Orbit

Reference System: Geocentric

Lander

"The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing." - Paul Theroux

The Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) mission began in February 2007 as a constellation of five NASA satellites (THEMIS A through THEMIS E) to study energy releases from Earth's magnetosphere known as substorms, magnetic phenomena that intensify auroras near Earth's poles. The name of the mission is an acronym alluding to the Titan Themis. Three of the satellites orbit the Earth within the magnetosphere, while two have been moved into orbit around the Moon. Those two were renamed ARTEMIS for Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun. THEMIS B became ARTEMIS P1 and THEMIS C became ARTEMIS P2. ARTEMIS P1 and P2 together comprise the THEMIS-ARTEMIS mission. The THEMIS satellites were launched February 17, 2007 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17 aboard a Delta II rocket. Each satellite carries identical instrumentation, including a fluxgate magnetometer (FGM), an electrostatic analyzer (ESA), a solid state telescope (SST), a search-coil magnetometer (SCM) and an electric field instrument (EFI). Each probe has a mass of 126 kg, including 49 kg of hydrazine fuel. THEMIS data can be accessed using the SPEDAS software.