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NASA’s MMS spacecraft achieve tightest flying formation ever

Submit on Monday, October 19th, 2015 22:58

On 15 October 2015, a NASA mission broke its own record: the four satellites of its Magnetospheric Multiscale mission are now flying at their smallest separation, the tightest multi-spacecraft formation ever flown in orbit. The four spacecraft are just 10 km apart, flying in what’s called a tetrahedral formation, with each spacecraft at the tip of a four-sided pyramid. The close formation is all the more impressive as the spacecraft speed along at up to 24,000 km per hour and – with their booms extended – each spacecraft covers as much area as a professional baseball stadium.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 19th, 2015 at 10:58 pm and is filed under SATELLITES. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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