PILOTing Through the Magnetosphere: Using Mission Design to Advance Science
Not so long ago (2022), Advanced Space collaborated with a team of science and engineering organizations to help design a science mission to study the effects of the biggest space weather maker in the solar system: the Sun. The mission concept, called Plasma Imaging, LOcal measurement, and Tomographic experiment (PILOT), is designed to measure the flow of cold, dense plasma into and out of Earth’s magnetosphere to better understand how the interaction between Sun and Earth’s planetary magnetic field defines the evolution of our planetary atmosphere. To measure these flows in real time requires a fleet of 34 satellites revolving around the Earth in two different orbits to capture plasma movement at different spatial and temporal scales.
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