"The Cluster 2 satellitesare all four in orbit, the launch was nominal," said Roger-Maurice Bonnet,EuropeanSpace Agency (ESA) science director, "so we are extremely pleased afterthis successful launch. The Cluster mission is back on track. After somany years of expectation for the scientists, ESA has been able to reallystick to its promises to the scientists." The Cluster science project wasinitiated in 1982.

Liftoff came at 7:13 a.m.Eastern Daylight Time (11:13 GMT) as the workhorseSoyuz booster roared to life and rose from the desert on a pillar offire and smoke.

At 08:45 a.m. EDT (12:45GMT), when telemetry through the ESA ground station of Kiruna in Swedenconfirmed the last critical step was nominal, about 100 controllers ofthe European Space Operations Center (ESOC), near Darmstadt in Germany,burst into applause to celebrate the success.

"After the loss of the firstCluster mission in 1996 [after the explosion of the first Ariane 5 launch],we had to invest into another identical mission to support the work ofall the scientists who invested so much time," said Daniel Sacotte, ESAadministrative director, "today we are happy to have made this choice."

Following their release fromthe Soyuz-Fregat launch vehicle provided by the French-Russian Starsemconsortium, the remaining Cluster 2 spacecraft pair will participate inan almost identical series of complex orbital maneuvers to their predecessorsSalsa and Samba to reach their final polar orbit.

The first Cluster 2 launch,performed July 16, 2000 from Baikonur Cosmodrome, successfully deliveredthe initial set of Cluster 2 satellites into an elliptical orbit. In thesame manner, after lifting off on Starsem's Soyuz-Fregat launcher, thepair of the 5,232-pound (2,373-kilogram) spacecraft have been injectedinto a highly elliptical orbit inclined 64.8 degrees.

This second Cluster launchwas the tenth successful mission for Starsem in 18 months from BaikonurCosmodrome.

~
 
 

Dubbed the "Cluster " becausethey will fly in formation in polar orbit like Star Wars spaceships,the four identical pilotless craft will be trying to detect billions ofinvisible solar particles that constantly bombard our planet. The sun islosing more than 1 million tons of matter per second this way.

Their main objective willbe to understand and forecast "weather in space" when geomagnetic stormsresulting from unusually high solar activity like this year hit our planet."With other science satellites like Soho, Cluster will improve our forecastof solar tempests and their effects on our magnetosphere,"  PhilippeEscoubet, project scientist for the European Space Agency's Cluster 2 toldSPACE.com.

These phenomena can takethe appearance of auroras above Earth's poles, or have dramatic effectson human activities by disrupting electrical power and communications,as well as cause serious anomalies in the operation of orbiting satellites.

The most violent storm ofthe 20th century occurred March 13 1989, when 6 million Canadians suffereda nine-hour power failure in the freezing Canadian province of Quebec.The polar lights or auroras were visible as far as Florida. Hefty voltagefluctuations occurred in the Atlantic and Pacific undersea cables, alongwith repeated failures of a chip production facility in the northeasternU.S. and a worldwide restriction of radio communications.  Also, theorbits of nine Earth-orbiting satellites were disturbed. The reason forthese incidents was a violent storm in the solar wind -- the flux of electricalcharged particles constantly emitted into space by our star.

Solar eruptions of thismagnitude therefore have serious economic impacts, and with increasingtechnical development it becomes more and more crucial to detect such incidentsearly so that precautionary measures can be taken.

In other instances, duringthe Reagan presidency, Air Force One couldn't receive or transmit any messagesduring several hours. In August 1972, just in between the Apollo 16 and17 missions to the moon, a solar eruption occurred. Because of the lackof protection from the solar particles when astronauts are outside Earth'smagnetic cocoon on their way to the moon, an Apollo crew could have beenexposed to a lethal accumulated dose (of 15 sieverts). For future three-yearMars missions, the "space-weather" forecast will be essential. "

Recently, a relationshipbetween the solar wind and Earth's weather, or climate, has been supposed.Some meteorologists assume that solar-wind particles penetrate the atmospheregenerating a multitude of electrically charged particles on their way.These in turn, act as condensation nuclei for water drops which may initiatecloud formation. Cluster data will greatly help scientists to know forsure if our planet's climate is affected by sun-Earth interaction.

The Cluster 2 scientificcommunity includes more than 200 scientists from the ESA with its 14 memberstates, the United States, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Hungary,India, Israel, Japan and Russia.