WASHINGTON — NASA has selected SpaceX to launch two small satellites to study space weather as part of its 2025 rideshare mission.
NASA announced on September 29 that it has tasked SpaceX with launching the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamic Reconnaissance Satellite (TRACERS), a pair of small satellites to study space weather and the magnetosphere from low Earth orbit.
NASA selected TRACERS as the Small Solar Physics Explorer (SMEX) mission in 2019, costing less than $115 million. At the time, it was planned to be launched as a secondary payload for another SMEX mission, Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH). But in August 2022, NASA announced that Punch will fly on the same Falcon 9 in 2025 as the spectrophotometer for the agency’s Astrophysics Mission, History of the Universe, Era of Reionization, and Ice Explorer (SPHEREx). Announced.
NASA’s announcement about the TRACERS launch did not say how the spacecraft would be launched other than by Falcon 9, nor did it specify a launch date. NASA spokesman Reejay Lockhart said on September 29 that TRACERS will be the primary payload for a rideshare mission headed for sun-synchronous orbit by April 2025.
As with past bids made through Venture-class Dedicated and Rideshare Acquisition (VADR) contracts, NASA said that such information is a “competitively confidential” award that could impact future task order bids. He declined to discuss the value of the task order, saying it was “informational.” According to government procurement databases, NASA added $3.593 million to SpaceX’s VADR contract on Sept. 26, but did not explicitly link it to the TRACERS mission order.
Once in sun-synchronous orbit, the two spacecraft will repeatedly cross the poles of Earth’s magnetosphere, with field lines bending toward the north and south poles, a phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere. Study interactions. .
The mission is led by David Miles of the University of Iowa, who took over as principal investigator after Craig Kretzing, also of the University of Iowa, passed away in August. The spacecraft is manufactured by Millennium Space Systems.