NASA’s next trip to space will be a rideshare mission with nine other satellites sharing a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The agency’s twin Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites or TRACERS will study the interplay between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere.

Liftoff of the mission from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base is scheduled for 11:13 a.m. PDT (2:13 p.m. EDT, 1813 UTC), which is the opening of a 57-minute launch window.

Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about 30 minutes prior to liftoff.



SpaceX will use the Falcon 9 first stage booster with the tail number B1081 to launch this mission. Flying for a 16th time, it previously flew NASA’s Crew-7, CRS-29 and NASA’s PACE (Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem) spacecraft.

Just under eight minutes after liftoff, B1081 will target a touchdown back at Landing Zone 4. If successful, this will be just the 27th landing at LZ-4 and the 478th booster landing to date for SpaceX.

Those in the vicinity of Vandenberg SFB may experience a sonic boom as the booster makes its way back through the atmosphere for a landing.

Understanding Earth’s magnetic field

The twin TRACERS at the heart of Tuesday’s mission are set to deploy on a one-year mission following a month-long commissioning period.The identical, octagonal duo, dubbed T1 and T2, are each 37 inches (0.95 m) tall and 52 inches (1.32 m) across, weighing less than 440 pounds (200 kg) apiece.

They will fly in a Sun-synchronous, low Earth orbit at an altitude of 367 miles (590 km) above the Earth’s surface. Their polar orbit will see the twins fly repeatedly through regions known as cusps, described by NASA as “funnel-shaped regions where Earth’s magnetic field opens over the North and South Poles.”

“There, Earth’s magnetic field dips down toward the ground, funneling and concentrating particles into one part of our atmosphere,” NASA wrote about the mission. “By studying this region, TRACERS will allow scientists to observe how quickly reconnection changes and evolves by comparing data collected by each satellite.”

Reconnection on Earth, also referred to as magnetic reconnection, is when the solar wind from the Sun reaches Earth’s magnetosphere shoot directly into the atmosphere.

“That’s the primary driver for beautiful things… like the Northern Lights, but it also drives some of these negative things that we want to understand and mitigate, like unplanned electrical currents in our electrical grids that can potentially cause accelerated aging in electrical pipelines, disruption of GPS, things like that,” said David Miles, the TRACERS Principal Investigator at the University of Iowa, during a prelaunch briefing.



TRACERS follows in the footsteps of the TRICE (Twin Rockets to Investigate Cusp Electrodynamics)-2 mission, which featured a pair of sounding rockets launched back in December 2018. TRACERS has the benefit of a pair of satellites that will orbit close to on another and pass by the same point on Earth between 10 to 120 seconds later.

“That gives us two, closely spaced measurements to allow us to pick apart is something accelerating or slowing down? Is something moving around or is something turning on and off?” Miles said. “Each spacecraft is going to get a measurement of basically the local state of the plasma, like the electric field, the magnetic field and the local ions and electrons that compose the plasma.”

The TRACERS mission is part of NASA’s Small Explorers (SMEX) program, similar to PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission that launched in March. TRACERS has a mission cost of $170 million.

The spacecraft were built by Millennium Space Systems, which is now a Boeing company. The mission is led by the University of Iowa and managed by NASA’s Heliophysics Explorers Program Office.

Each satellite carries six instruments as outlined by NASA:

ACE: The Analyzer for Cusp Electrons measures the electron portion of local plasma and how they move with respect to the background magnetic field.

The Analyzer for Cusp Electrons measures the electron portion of local plasma and how they move with respect to the background magnetic field. ACI: The Analyzer for Cusp Ions measures the ion portion of local plasma and how they move with respect to the background magnetic field.

The Analyzer for Cusp Ions measures the ion portion of local plasma and how they move with respect to the background magnetic field. MAG: The 3-axis fluxgate magnetometer measures the background magnetic field of plasma. It can also be used to infer the presence of electrical currents and low frequency plasma waves.

The 3-axis fluxgate magnetometer measures the background magnetic field of plasma. It can also be used to infer the presence of electrical currents and low frequency plasma waves. MSC: The 3-axis Magnetic Search Coil measures high frequency magnetic waves.

The 3-axis Magnetic Search Coil measures high frequency magnetic waves. MAGIC: The MAGnetometers for Innovation and Capability team is building fluxgate magnetometers from scratch and investigating new designs. As a technology demonstration on TRACERS, MAGIC must do no harm to the other instruments while testing its designs for future space missions.

The MAGnetometers for Innovation and Capability team is building fluxgate magnetometers from scratch and investigating new designs. As a technology demonstration on TRACERS, MAGIC must do no harm to the other instruments while testing its designs for future space missions. MEB: The common Main Electronics Box hosts the electronics for electronic field instruments, MSC, and MAG.

Along for the ride

The two TRACERS spacecraft are joined by nine others spread across three, NASA-funded missions, one ESA mission and one from an Australian company promising air traffic control from space. The NASA-involved payloads are the Athena EPIC (Economical Payload Integration Cost) SmallSat backed by SEOPS, the technology demonstration PExT (Polylingual Experimental Terminal) backed by York Space Systems and the REAL (Relativistic Electron Atmospheric Loss) CubeSat backed by Maverick Space Systems.

Athena EPIC is a $15 million mission born out of a challenge from NASA’s Langley Research Center director to see what could be accomplished a seven-month timeframe. Private company, NovaWurks, contributed the spacecraft that was assembled with a Hyper-Integrated Satlet or HISat.

This is described by NASA as a building block-style architecture that can be built up into larger SensorCraft structures, allowing for resource sharing with multiple payloads. Athena EPIC’s sensor was built using spare parts from NASA’s CERES (Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System) mission.

“Instead of Athena carrying its own processor, we’re using the processors on the HISats to control things like our heaters and do some of the control functions that typically would be done by a processor on our payload,” said Kory Priestley, principal investigator for Athena EPIC from NASA Langley. “So, this is merging an instrument and a satellite platform into what we are calling a SensorCraft. It’s a more integrated approach. We don’t need as many capabilities built into our key instrument because it’s being brought to us by the satellite host. We obtain greater redundancy, and it simplifies our payload.”

The mission includes cooperation from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the U.S. Space Force. Priestley said latter provided the contract mechanism to align with NovaWurks and NOAA is interested the maturation of a program like this for future commercial missions for the National Weather Service.

The PExT mission has a $20 million life cycle cost over its planned five-year life. The initial demonstration for this mission is only slated for six to nine months. It exists within NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program and is a collaboration between the agency’s Wideband Terminal Project and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).

The polylingual nature of the spacecraft allows it to “receive and understand various languages used by different commercial manufacturers when operating in their near-Earth networks,” the agency said. Its wide frequency allows it to reach across the full scope of both commercial and government Ka-band allocations “including 17.7 GHz to 23.55 GHz Forward, and 27 GHz to 31 GHz Return.”

NASA is working on ways to move beyond its aging TDRSS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System) used to communicate with a host of spacecraft.

“We partnered with five members of industry and acadamia to achieve this mission,” said Greg Heckler, the deputy program manager for capability development at SCaN. “[APL] developed the terminal and is managing projects for SCaN. The terminal is mounted on a York Space Systems bus, and they actually procured the launch itself, and will be operating the spacecraft for the first year of the demonstration.

“And during the demo, PExT will communicate across our TDRSS and two commercial networks: SES’ O3b mPOWER network, which is being actually established as we speak, and Viasat Boeing Global Xpress network as well.”

Finally connected to NASA, the mission will carry the $5 million REAL CubeSat, which carries the Energetic Particle Sensor (ECP) payload, a miniaturized particle detection instrument from APL. It’s designed to “characterize the forces that cause electrons in Earth’s radiation belts to fall into the atmosphere, space weather events that affect the upper atmosphere — potentially even the climate — and can damage the increasing number of satellites in low Earth orbit.”

The REAL spacecraft was built and tested at Montana State University, which features a design that upgrades what MSU used during on its IT-SPINS (Ionospheric-Thermospheric Scanning Photometer for Ion-Neutral Studies) CubeSat that deployed in June 2021 from Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft at the conclusion of the NG-15 mission to the International Space Station.

Connectivity and air traffic control

The other two missions onboard the Falcon 9 rocket are LIDE (Direct Access Live Demonstration) and Skykraft 4. The former is one half of a two-mission project from the European Space Agency’s Connectivity and Secure Communications office.

LIDE is a 12U CubeSat developed by Tyvak International, now a part of Terran Orbital (in turn, a Lockheed Martin company) that uses a bidirectional K/Ka-band radio frequency transponder “to enable direct access tests with ground terminals— a gateway and an end-user terminal—compliant with 3GPP’s NTN standard.”

The satellite will work with the REMI (Direct Access 5G Satcom Reference Mission) mission, which “focuses on a feasibility study for providing 5G broadband access to rural and suburban areas via a SmallSats.”

“The platform’s active attitude determination and control system ensures optimized satellite orientation for enhanced signal reception,” ESA wrote in a prelaunch statement. “In essence, the present solution aims to demonstrate techniques and technologies enabling superior performance, broader coverage, and enhanced reliability, offering unmatched value to users and stakeholders alike. The project is significant for advancing European telecommunication capabilities, with implications for future 3GPP protocols and 6G technology.”

Australian company Skykraft will oversee the deployment of five of its spacecraft during this mission. These will be the final payloads deployed from the Falcon 9 upper stage, happening about an hour and 45 minutes after liftoff.

This constellation is designed to establish a system of space-based Air Traffic Management (ATM) services.