NASA has selected one Small Explorer mission concept to advance toward flight design and another for an extended period of concept development.
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Science Management Council has chosen CINEMA (Cross-scale Investigation of Earth’s Magnetotail and Aurora) to enter Phase B of development, which includes detailed planning and design for flight and mission operations. The principal investigator for the CINEMA mission concept is Robyn Millan of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.
The proposed CINEMA mission aims to deepen our understanding of how plasma energy flows into Earth’s magnetosphere. This highly dynamic convective flow can be unpredictable—sometimes steady and other times explosive—driving phenomena such as fast plasma jets, global electrical current systems, and vibrant auroral displays.
“The CINEMA mission will help us research magnetic convection in Earth’s magnetosphere — a critical piece of the puzzle in understanding why some space weather events are so influential, such as causing magnificent aurora displays and impacts to ground- and space-based infrastructure, while others seem to diminish,” said Joe Westlake, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Using multiple, multi-point measurements to improve predictions of these impacts on humans and technology across the solar system is a key strategy for the future of heliophysics research.”
CINEMA’s constellation of nine small satellites will investigate this convective mystery using a suite of instruments on each spacecraft — an energetic particle detector, an auroral imager, and a magnetometer — operating in a polar low Earth orbit. By correlating the energetic particles observed in this orbit with simultaneous auroral imagery and magnetic field measurements, CINEMA will work to connect large-scale magnetic activity around Earth to the visible ionospheric signatures we observe, such as auroras. The mission has been awarded approximately $28 million to enter Phase B. The total mission cost, excluding launch, will not exceed $182.8 million. Phase B will last 10 months, and if selected, the mission would launch no earlier than 2030.
NASA also selected the proposed CMEx (Chromospheric Magnetism Explorer) mission for an extended Phase A study. This expanded phase will allow the mission team to further assess and refine their design for future consideration. The principal investigator for the CMEx mission concept is Holly Gilbert of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. The extended Phase A effort, which will last 12 months, is funded at $2 million.
The CMEx concept proposes a single-spacecraft mission using proven UV spectropolarimetric instrumentation previously demonstrated during NASA’s CLASP (Chromospheric Layer Spectropolarimeter) suborbital sounding rocket flight. Leveraging this heritage hardware, CMEx would be able to diagnose the lower layers of the Sun’s chromosphere to investigate the origins of solar eruptions and determine the magnetic sources of the solar wind.
Both proposed missions recently completed a one-year early concept study in response to the 2022 Heliophysics Explorers Program Small-class Explorer (SMEX) Announcement of Opportunity.
“Space is becoming increasingly important and plays a role in just about everything we do,” said Asal Naseri, acting associate flight director for heliophysics at NASA Headquarters. “These mission concepts, if advanced to flight, will enhance our ability to predict solar events that could harm satellites we rely on daily and help mitigate risks to astronauts near Earth, at the Moon, or on Mars.”
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