Past Plasma Missions

Double Star

Launched in 2003 and 2004, Double Star was China's first purely scientific space mission and its first collaboration with ESA. One of the Double Star spacecraft orbited the Earth in an equatorial orbit, whilst the the second was in a polar orbit. Each Double Star spacecraft has a payload consisting of Chinese and European instruments designed to study the magnetosphere and radiation belts. Part of these payloads are the PEACE instruments. These measure the 3D electron velocity distributions of the space plasma around the Earth.