Swarm: A constellation to study the Earth’s magnetic field

By E. Friis-Christensen, H. Lühr, G. Hulot. 2006

581 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The Swarm mission was selected as the 5th mission in ESA’s Earth Explorer Programme in 2004. The mission will provide the best ever survey of the geomagnetic field and its temporal evolution that will lead to new insights into the Earth system by improving our understanding of the Earth’s interior and its effect on Geospace, the vast region around the Earth where electrodynamic processes are influenced by the Earth’s magnetic field. Scheduled for launch in 2010, the mission will comprise a constellation of three satellites, with two spacecraft flying sideby- side at lower altitude (450 km initial altitude), thereby measuring the East-West gradient of the magnetic field, and the third one flying at higher altitude (530 km). High-precision and high-resolution measurements of the strength, direction and variation of the magnetic field, complemented by precise navigation, accelerometer and electric field measurements, will provide the necessary observations that are required to separate and model the various sources of the geomagnetic field. This results in a unique “view” inside the Earth from space to study the composition and processes of its interior. It also allows analysing the Sun’s influence within the Earth system. In addition practical applications in many different areas, such as space weather, radiation hazards, navigation and resource management, will benefit from the Swarm concept.

Subfields: Geophysics, Molecular Biology, Oceanography

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e9839ec6aa193a3772d548d7f654fa4c365a28e1

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Citations in the corpus

International Geomagnetic Reference Field: the eleventh generation (2010, background): “…were crucial sources of observations for IGRF-11 are approaching the end of their lifetimes, but fortunately one of the aims of the upcoming ESA Swarm mission (Friis-Christensen et al. 2006) is to provide the high-quality satellite data that will be of great importance to the next IGRF revision.”
The Magnetic Field of the Earth’s Lithosphere (2010, background): “With the upcoming launch of the Swarm constellation of three satellites (Friis-Christensen et al. 2006), it is expected that the remaining gaps and mismatch between airborne and satellite surveys will be minimized.”
The US/UK World Magnetic Model for 2010-2015 (2010, background): “Swarm is composed of three satellites, two of which fly in a constellation at a lower altitude while the third flies higher and is not synchronized with the lower pair (Friis-Christensen et al., 2006).”
3-D Global Induction in the Oceans and Solid Earth: Recent Progress in Modeling Magnetic and Electric Fields from Sources of Magnetospheric, Ionospheric and Oceanic Origin (2008, background): “Since motional induction in the ocean is sensitive to the movement of the entire water column ( Flosadottir et al. 1997 ) this offers a possible way of monitoring of tsunami flow.”
The Magnetic Field of Planet Earth (2010, background): “Such an improved continuation of magnetic field observation from space is thus expected to lead to even more progress in our understanding of all sources of the Earth's magnetic field (Friis-Christensen et al. 2006, 2009).”
The US/UK World Magnetic Model for 2015-2020 (2015, background): “Swarm is composed of three satellites, two of which fly in a constellation at a lower altitude while the third flies higher and is not synchronized with the lower pair (Friis-Christensen et al., 2006).”