JESSICA RYE: Joining us now is principal investigator for the mission, Dr. Vasillis Angelopoulis from the
University of California-Berkeley. Good afternoon. We have a short animation video.
If you'd like to talk over with us and tell us a little bit about the mission, that would be wonderful.
DR. VASSILIS ANGELOPOULIS: I'd be happy to do that. RYE: Thank you.
ANGELOPOULIS: Yes, indeed. This is the five-satellite complement of the THEMIS mission. The five satellites are equipped with,
with instruments that measure the Earth's environment and the deploys to their respective positions in order to measure rapid
and, in fact, explosive energy releases in the Earth's space environment.
And by tracking those energy releases from one satellite to the other,
they will be able to determine for the first time where they originate in near-Earth space.
Those energy releases is something we call "substorms" in our field, and they're very important to understand.
They're as fundamental for space physics as our storms and tornadoes are in order
to understand large thunderstorms in meteorology.
You can see here how the THEMIS spacecraft will finally end up in their final positions in space,
and they're unique in the sense that they are, in orbit, they're multiples of each other,
so they line up along this sun-Earth line as you see in this image now,
and track the flow of energy in order to determine the origin of that trigger of the energy released in space.
Now, where that energy originates, somewhere around half the way to the moon,
all the way down to a sixth of the way to the moon, behind the Earth, along the sun-Earth line,
it comes rushing towards Earth and energizes particles and creates large space currents that can be, on
occasion, damaging to telecommunications satellites and the space radiation can be hazardous to humans in space.
So, for this reason, we wanted to understand these elemental energy releases, these substorms,
in order to better understand and predict eventually space weather effects that are important to us.
RYE: So what kind of data are we hoping to get from these spacecraft?
ANGELOPOULIS: The five identical satellites carry five instruments that measure electric and magnetic fields,
as well as particles, electron and proton out in space. And when they measure those,
they can then get a composite image, or picture, of the pressure waves and the, the heating mechanisms out in space,
much like buoys out in the ocean track pressure waves and temperature changes of weather fronts.
Now we're talking about space fronts, but really it's analogous to what meteorologists do on the ground.
RYE: Well, I know we're looking forward, hopefully, to a launch this afternoon at
6:05 and thank you for taking your time to join us today.
ANGELOPOULIS: Thank you so much. RYE: At T-47 minutes and counting, this is Delta Launch Control.