Introduction The Cluster mission

By C. Escoubet, M. Fehringer, M. Goldstein. 2001

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Abstract. The Cluster mission, ESA’s first cornerstone project, together with the SOHO mission, dating back to the first proposals in 1982, was finally launched in the summer of 2000. On 16 July and 9 August, respectively, two Russian Soyuz rockets blasted off from the Russian cosmodrome in Baikonour to deliver two Cluster spacecraft, each into their proper orbit. By the end of August 2000, the four Cluster satellites had reached their final tetrahedral constellation. The commissioning of 44 instruments, both individually and as an ensemble of complementary tools, was completed five months later to ensure the optimal use of their combined observational potential. On 1 February 2001, the mission was declared operational. The main goal of the Cluster mission is to study the small-scale plasma structures in three dimensions in key plasma regions, such as the solar wind, bow shock, magnetopause, polar cusps, magnetotail and the auroral zones. With its unique capabilities of three-dimensional spatial resolution, Cluster plays a major role in the International Solar Terrestrial Program (ISTP), where Cluster and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) are the European contributions. Cluster’s payload consists of state-of-the-art plasma instrumentation to measure electric and magnetic fields from the quasi-static up to high frequencies, and electron and ion distribution functions from energies of nearly 0 eV to a few MeV. The science operations are coordinated by the Joint Science Operations Centre (JSOC), at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK), and implemented by the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), in Darmstadt, Germany. A network of eight national data centres has been set up for raw data processing, for the production of physical parameters, and their distribution to end users all over the world. The latest information on the Cluster mission can be found at http://sci.esa.int/cluster/ .

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2ccd0a0fb1a8144e2a9e7a044d988bf3732db410

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Intermittent energy dissipation by turbulent reconnection (2017, background): “The European Space Agency four-spacecraft mission Cluster [Escoubet et al., 2001] can readily satisfy the first criterion: In the autumn of 2003, Cluster detected a few magnetic reconnection events [Eastwood et al.”
Magnetospheric configurations from a high-resolution data-based magnetic field model (2007, background): “More details on the orbital design of the Cluster mission and its magnetic field experiment can be found elsewhere [Escoubet et al., 2001; Balogh et al., 2001].”
Multi-point observations of the Hall electromagnetic field and secondary island formation during magnetic reconnection (2006, background): “The Cluster mission consists of four identical spacecraft in polar orbits around the Earth [Escoubet et al., 2001].”
Fermi and betatron acceleration of suprathermal electrons behind dipolarization fronts (2011, methodology): “[5] Data from Cluster instruments FGM, RAPID, PEACE, CIS, and EFW, are used in this study [Escoubet et al., 2001, and references therein].”
Field‐aligned currents' scale analysis performed with the Swarm constellation (2014, background): “[2003]; the CLUSTER II mission, Escoubet et al. [2001]; and ST5 mission initial results by Slavin et al.”
Low‐energy ions: A previously hidden solar system particle population (2012, methodology): “RAPID (high energy particle) [Escoubet et al., 2001] and CIS-CODIF (mass-discriminated ion) data rule out such interpretations here.”
Swarm Robotic Behaviors and Current Applications (2020, background): “Two swarms of satellites are currently in Earth orbit for space exploration: Swarm (Agency, 2004) and Cluster II (Escoubet et al., 2001).”
Average properties of the magnetic reconnection ion diffusion region in the Earth's magnetotail: The 2001–2005 Cluster observations and comparison with simulations (2009, methodology): “[5] More recently, exploration of the diffusion region has mainly used data from the multispacecraft Cluster mission [Escoubet et al., 2001], principally in a series of individual event case studies as summarized by Paschmann [2008], who provides a good overview of recent activity in this area.”
A statistical study of EMIC waves observed by Cluster: 1. Wave properties (2014, background): “The Cluster mission [Escoubet et al., 2001], operating since 2001, is a four spacecraft constellation in a tetrahedral formation.”