Closest Multi-Spacecraft Flying Formation on This Week @NASA – September 23, 2016

The four spacecraft orbiting Earth in formation as part of NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission achieved a new record recently when the space between them was decreased from just over six miles to only four-and-a-half miles. This is the closest separation ever of any multi-spacecraft formation. The team of spacecraft fly in a pyramid shape, called a tetrahedron, which enables MMS to capture three-dimensional observations of magnetic reconnection – a mysterious phenomenon, during which magnetic