Satellite Recycling

[Jay-qu]

With the THEMIS mission coming to an end, some scientists from Berkley and NASA have come up with an inventive way to extend the mission - around the moon!

 

The mission was designed to make some measurements of the Earth's magnetosphere, having completed that objective, back in 2008 NASA extended the mission under the name ARTEMIS (Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun) with plans to send a few of the satellites to make the same measurements around the moon. The cool part is that these satellites were not designed to make such a trip - but with some complex maneuvering and very clever flying they have got one of the satellites out of Earth orbit and to an Earth-Moon Lagrange point! It took a few years, and will still be a while longer until it makes its final insertion into Moon orbit, but all of this is essentially for free.

 

Read more here, (includes a cool pic of the satellites trajectory):

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/blogs/space/index.jsp?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog:04ce340e-4b63-4d23-9695-d49ab661f385Post:ee66f209-b0ea-44d1-828d-5b4e057ee5aa

 

Reminds me of those little gravity games we played a few years back :(