NASA Launches Pyramid Satellite Project To Study Space Weather

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are doing some pretty tight flying.

Alex DeMetrick reports four satellites are being brought close together to get a closer look at space weather.

The Blue Angels pull off tight formations every day, but in Maryland, controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center are bringing four satellites into a very close formation for the first time.

"No one's ever gotten this close before," said Conrad Schiff, with the project.

Four small satellites are being brought within ten miles of each other. That's a whisker close in space.

"Keeping the spacecraft close enough to meet the science goals, and at the same time, keeping them from actually getting so close they could collide," Schiff said.

Up on the flight path display, the four satellites form a pyramid.

Inside that pyramid, periodic blasts from the sun and the constant solar wind will be studied as they hit the Earth's magnetic field.

"That magnetic field reconnects, opens up and then travels around and reconnects in the tail," said Alex Young, with the project.

It will trigger an explosive burst of energy in a small space.

"When that's released, it travels along the magnetic field back towards the Earth and into the poles," Young said.

The trigger mechanism of space weather.

Energy that becomes the Northern Lights, but is also capable of disrupting electric power grids on Earth and causing damage to satellites in orbit.

"As we become more and more technologically advanced, we become more and more susceptible to all of this phenomenon," Young said. "And so it's really critical that we understand it so we can better predict it and prepare for it."

And the spark between the four satellites could be where that knowledge lies.

NASA tried an earlier mission using multiple satellites, but they didn't fly close enough together to produce the data scientists are looking for.