NASA’s Geotail mission has retired after 30 years of hard work.
Launched in July 1992, the spacecraft was a joint mission between the Japanese and American space agencies. Geotail was supposed to be a low-budget mission that would last 4 years returning data around Earth’s magnetosphere, which is a protective magnetic bubble that prevents solar flares from coming into the Earth. But in 1996 when its mission was supposed to end, NASA extended it due to its “high-quality data return.” And on its 10th launch anniversary in 2002, the spacecraft was functioning so smoothly that NASA decided to extend its mission again. Almost a decade later in 2012, 2 of the spacecraft's 3 data recorders failed. Data recorders transmitted all of the data on a spacecraft, everything from the location of the spacecraft to its scientific discoveries. But since one data transmitter was still operating, the mission was extended again. Geotail continued to study Earth for 10 more years until in November 2022, its last data recorder broke.
“Geotail has been a very productive satellite, and it was the first joint NASA-JAXA mission,” said Don Fairfield, the first project scientist for Geotail. “The mission made important contributions to our understanding of how the solar wind interacts with Earth’s magnetic field to produce magnetic storms and auroras.”
The Geotail mission may be over, but its data collected over the course of 30 years can be put to use in understanding our planet better.