Despite this, following spacecraft separation on the R3 launch, the upper stage collided with the Prospero satellite, damaging one of the spacecraft's communications antennae; however the spacecraft was still able to successfully complete its mission.
The formation must maintain the relative spacecraft separations to within a tolerance of a few metres.
We found that all three magnetopause current sheets are nearly co-planar on the scales of the CLUSTER spacecraft separation.
The distribution is measured up to the Nyquist wave number kmax = 3.0 × 10−2 rad/km that is determined by the spacecraft separation distance (cf. wave numbers of the ion inertial length are about 0.008, 0.009, 0.017, 0.013, 0.026, and 0.014 rad/km for the region 1 to 6, respectively).
Safe spacecraft separation is assured and efficient fuel usage is obtained.
We investigate the magnetic field data for two Cluster orbits of bow shock crossings during the mission phase with about 100 km mean spacecraft separation.
On the R3 launch, the ascent took 710 s from liftoff to spacecraft separation.
The orbit maneuvers also maintained the spacecraft separation between 40 and 60 km in order to reduce KBRR signal multipath, whereas during the Primary Mission the spacecraft separation ranged from 70 to 200 km.
For given spacecraft longitudinal separation of about 150 km, R max shows a considerable spread with a mean value of around 0.4 and standard deviations of ca. 0.2, especially after 2000 LT.
Single-25 and multi-point26, 27 observations, even at relatively modest spacecraft separations, often reveal this picture to be far too simplistic, with evidence of CME distortion by the ambient solar wind.
