Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.
Landsat 8 Aqua Terra Aura

Recent Imagery

You will be directed to the NASA Visible Earth webpage when you select Images by Mission below, or click on the images at right that are randomly generated to represent four out of all possible topics.

You are here

Dynamics Explorer 1 (DE 1)

Click image for alternate view

Status: Completed
Mission Category: Historical Missions
Launch Date: August 3, 1981
Launch Location: Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA

The Dynamics Explorer (DE) mission’s general objective was to investigate the strong interactive processes coupling the hot, tenuous, convecting plasmas of the magnetosphere and the cooler, denser plasmas and gases corotating in the Earth’s ionosphere, upper atmosphere, and plasmasphere. Two satellites, DE 1 and DE 2, were launched together and were placed in polar coplanar orbits, permitting simultaneous measurements at high and low altitudes in the same field-line region.

Key Dynamics Explorer 1 Facts

Mission/Portal Page: http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/spacecraftDisplay.do?id=1981-070A
Launch Vehicle: Delta
Instruments: EICS (Energetic Ion Composition Spectrometer)
HAPI (High Altitude Plasma Instrument)
MAG-A (Magnetic Field Observations Triaxial Fluxgate Magnetometer)
PWI (Plasma Waves Instrument)
RIMS (Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer)
SAI (Spin Scan Auroral Imager)
Project Scientist(s): Robert A. Hoffman