UMD/PD/SPG/WIND
type: Concept
in scheme: providers
definition: The WIND spacecraft was launched on November 1, 1994 by a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Station. For the first two years of the mission WIND will be in a highly elliptical orbit on the sunward side of the Earth with an apogee of 250 Earth radii and a perigee of at least 5 Earth radii. Multiple double lunar swing by allow WIND to maximize the amount of time it spends directly upstream of the earth monitoring the solar wind. Later WIND will be inserted into a halo orbit at the Earth-Sun L1 point. The nine instruments onboard allow constant monitoring of the solar wind plasma, energetic particles, magnetic fields, radio and plasma waves found in the interplanetary medium as well as cosmic gamma ray bursts. For more information concerning the different instruments please visit the NASA WIND homepage. For the current status of the WIND spacecraft see NASA WIND status. Website: http://space.umd.edu/wind/sms.html [Summary provided by the University of Maryland.]

ACADEMIC
type: Concept