Overview of the FAST Mission

FAST, the second mission in NASA's Small Explorer Satellite Program (SMEX), is a satellite designed to study Earth's aurora. This highly successful spacecraft has helped scientists answer fundamental questions about the causes and makeup of the aurora; please see publications or nuggets that have come from analysis of FAST data. FAST's primary objective is to study the microphysics of space plasma and the accelerated particles that cause the aurora.

FAST was launched on August 21, 1996 from a Pegasus rocket into a highly elliptical orbit. It crosses Earth's auroral zones (donut shaped regions centered on the poles) four times each orbit, and only collects high-resolution data ("snapshots") while in those zones. It ventures high into the charged particle environment of the aurora to measure the electric and magnetic fields, plasma waves, energetic electrons and ions, ion mass composition, and thermal plasma density and temperature.

For more information:

• The Aurora
• The FAST Spacecraft
  • Instruments
  • Data
• The FAST Team
• Mission & Science Operations Center
• Launch and Orbit
• An Overview of the Fast Auroral SnapshoT (FAST) Mission
• FAST Facts

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