The space missions the group is involved with and the data these missions provide are central to the research interests of the group. Instrumentation designed and built by the group is currently exploring many corners of our solar system.
Imperial College Space Missions
- Current Operational Space Missions
- Post-Operational/ Continuing Exploitation
- Missions Under Development
- Missions Under Study
Current Operational Space Missions
These are currently operational space missions carrying space instrumentation built in the Space and Atmospheric Physics Group at Imperial College London.
Solar Orbiter | ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft orbits the Sun in the inner heliosphere, taking pictures of the solar atmosphere and measuring the local solar wind | |
Cluster | Cluster is a scientific mission of ESA to study the space environment of the Earth | |
BepiColombo | An ESA mission to explore and study the space environment of Mercury | |
RadCube | RadCube is a CubeSat In-Orbit Demonstration mission led by C3S (Hungary) under the auspices of the European Space Agency. Imperial provides MAGIC (MAGNETOMETER from Imperial College) a miniaturised magnetoresistive sensor, as part of the RadMag payload led by EK (Hungary). The sensor is mounted on a boom provided by Astronika (Poland). | |
JUICE will carry out an in-depth study of the Jovian system and its four largest satellites, with particular emphasis on Ganymede and Europa. Imperial is leading the J-MAG magnetometer. |
Post-Operational/ Continuing Exploitation
Cassini-Huygens | A joint NASA/ESA mission to Saturn and Titan | |
Double Star | Joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Chinese Mission to explore the Earth's magnetosphere | |
Ulysses | ESA's mission to study the heliosphere flying over the poles of the Sun | |
Venus Express |
ESA’s first mission to our nearest planetary neighbour, Venus |
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Rosetta |
An ESA mission to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko |
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Trio-Cinema |
A three spacecraft CubeSat mission to study Space Weather by making multi-point measurements of the magnetic field and energetic ions and electrons in near-Earth space and imaging ring current particles |
Missions Under Development
IMAP |
The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is a NASA heliophysics mission that will simultaneously investigate the acceleration of energetic particles and the interaction of the solar wind with the local interstellar medium. The magnetometer instrument (MAG) is lead by Imperial College. |
HelioSwarm |
HelioSwarm, is a NASA heliophysics mission that will launch a constellation of 9 spacecraft to investigate the fundamental properties of plasma turbulence. The magnetometer instruments (MAG) are led by Imperial College. |
Comet Interceptor |
The Comet Interceptor mission will consist of three spacecraft and is ESA's first 'Fast Class Mission'. Imperial is part of the magnetometer consortium |
Missions Under Study
Missions under study:
Lagrange | Lagrange is a planned ESA space weather mission (launch 2027) that will operate at the Sun-Earth L5 lagrange point. Imperial is leading the magnetometer consortium |