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Saturday, June 29, 2013

NASA probes TWINS: five years of observations of ring current Earth

Land surrounds the dynamic area, which accept the name of the magnetosphere. This area is controlled by the magnetic and electric forces coming from the sun energy and matter, as well as a variety of waves and processes that differ from those that are commonly found in terrestrial physics. Within this constantly changing magnetic "bubble" is toroidal formation of charged particles, the plane of which coincides with the plane of Earth's equator. 



This zone is called the ring current, and it has a significant impact on space weather, the observed around our planet, because it can transmit the fluctuation of the magnetic field on the Earth or to report malicious surface charges hulls of spaceships.

June 15, 2008 study of this mysterious region was launched by NASA spacecraft, dubbed the Two Wide-angle Imaging Neutral-atom Spectrometers, or TWINS. These devices are moving in the widely separated from each other planes, providing a unique stereoscopic view of the Earth's ring current.


In 5 years of operation, the probes have helped scientists make three-dimensional maps of this unique region of the magnetosphere, will greatly improve the existing scientific models of the magnetic shell of our planet.

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