{"id":563,"date":"2011-02-24T11:17:55","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T11:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress65\/?p=563"},"modified":"2011-02-24T11:17:55","modified_gmt":"2011-02-24T11:17:55","slug":"polar-studying-magnetosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.grayrinehart.com\/blog\/polar-studying-magnetosphere\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar: Studying the Magnetosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifteen years ago today — February 24, 1996 — a Delta-II rocket out of Vandenberg AFB lifted a spacecraft simply named “Polar” into a polar orbit.<\/p>\n

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\n(Diagram of the Polar spacecraft. See text below for acronyms. NASA image.)<\/em><\/p>\n

\nPolar<\/a> was one of several spacecraft in the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Project<\/a>. (Here is a better project overview site<\/a>.) Together with “Wind” and “Geotail,” Polar’s mission was to “obtain coordinated, simultaneous investigations of the Sun-Earth space environment over an extended period of time.”<\/p>\n

Polar<\/a> operations ended in April 2008.<\/p>\n

In the image above, the labels point out different instruments on the spacecraft:<\/p>\n