20.07.2025 

NASA’s TRACERS Mission Targeting Launch on July 22

NASA’s TRACERS (Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites) spacecraft are targeting launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket during a launch window that opens at 2:13 p.m. EDT (11:13 a.m. PDT) on Tuesday, July 22. The TRACERS mission and three NASA small satellites will launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The TRACERS mission will study how the solar wind, the continuous stream of ionized particles escaping the Sun and pouring out into space, interacts with Earth’s magnetosphere, the region around Earth dominated by our planet’s magnetic field. Understanding this region and space weather patterns is paramount in our increasingly technologically driven society, as space weather events can affect our power grids and communications satellites, and create potentially hazardous conditions for astronauts.

Also launching on this flight are three additional NASA-funded payloads. The Athena EPIC (Economical Payload Integration Cost) SmallSat, led by NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is designed to demonstrate an innovative, configurable way to put remote-sensing instruments into orbit faster and more affordably. The Polylingual Experimental Terminal (PExT) technology demonstration, managed by the agency’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, will showcase new technology that empowers missions to roam between communications networks in space, like cell phones roam between providers on Earth.

Finally, the Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss (REAL) CubeSat, led by Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, will use space as a laboratory to understand how high-energy particles within the bands of radiation that surround Earth are naturally scattered into the atmosphere, aiding the development of methods for removing these damaging particles to better protect satellites and the critical ground systems they support. The REAL mission is the first CubeSat to launch for the state of New Hampshire as part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative, which provides low-cost access to space for U.S. educational institutions, informal educational institutions such as museums and science centers, non-profits with educational and outreach components, as well as NASA centers for early career workforce development. With REAL, 39 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico will have launched as part of the initiative.

The TRACERS mission is led and managed by David Miles at the University of Iowa with support from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. NASA’s Heliophysics Explorers Program Office at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the mission for the agency’s Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The University of Iowa, Southwest Research Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Berkeley, all lead instruments on TRACERS that study changes in the magnetic field and electric field. NASA’s Launch Services Program, based at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, manages the agency’s VADR(Venture-class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare) contract.

Quelle: NASA