SPACETRC / MISSION ARCHIVE
Follow a mission
through time.
Real position samples from NASA SPDF’s MMS1 archive. Explore an Earth-orbiting mission with its time, distance and coordinate frame.
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01 / OPEN THE ARCHIVE
MMS1 · Magnetospheric Multiscale
Selection: 16–18 October 2016; 432 positions at approximately 10-minute spacing. Flight positions come from the definitive MMS1 ephemeris supplied by NASA SPDF SSCWeb.
This is a dated flight archive. Position is not a camera image or a measurement of magnetic reconnection. The replay never extrapolates outside the archive.
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02 / TIME AND REFERENCE
Reopen the same investigation
JSON keeps the data record, time, reference frame and selections together. Shared URLs exclude personal notes and account information.
03 / THE MISSION QUESTION
Distance changes.
The research question deepens.
Magnetic reconnection
MMS investigates energy transfer associated with the Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields. The four-spacecraft mission interprets position alongside plasma and field measurements. This workspace displays only selected MMS1 positions.
GEI J2000
The coordinates are Earth-centered in the J2000 geocentric equatorial inertial frame. They are not latitude and longitude on an Earth map. Change the projection to inspect the same path from different directions.
Compare carefully
Find the nearest and farthest archived samples. Does distance traveled in equal time intervals change? Approximate speed is derived from adjacent positions; ten-minute sampling smooths fast changes.
Sources and reuse
No partnership or endorsement by the source organizations is implied. Source/processing information and file SHA-256 identities are supplied in the manifest.
Source manifest ↗