Overview Of Advanced Composition Explorer Mission also called as ACE

ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) is an Explorer mission that was taken care by the Space Science Mission (SSM)and Payload Development Division(PDD) of the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA).. More on the ACE personnel, Also scientific CoInvestigators can be found here.....

Advanced Composition Explorer Mission was launched on a McDonnell--Douglas Delta II 7920 launch vehicle on August25,1997 from the Kennedy Space Center(KSC) in Florida..



The Planet Earth is constantly bombarded with a giant stream of accelerated particles arriving not only from Sun, but also from galactic sources and interstellar. Studies show these energetic particles contributes to our understanding of the formation & evolution of Solar system as well as the astrophysical-processes involved. Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft carrying 6 very high-resolution sensors & 3 monitoring instruments samples the low-energy particles of solar origin & high--energy galactic particles with a range of collecting power ten to thousand times greater than the past experiments.

These orbits the L-1 libration point which is a point of Earth-Sun gravitational equilibrium about 1.5 million kilometers from Planet Earth % 148 million kilometer from the Sun. From ACE's location @ L1 ACE has a prime view of the solar wind, interplanetary magnetic field & higher energy particles accelerated by the Sun,also particles accelerated in the heliosphere & the galactic regions which are beyond...



(ACE)Advanced Composition Explorer also provides near real time 24/7 continuous coverage of solar wind parameters & solar energetic particle intensities {called as space weather}. When reporting the space weather ACE(Advanced Composition Explorer) provides an early warning (about 1 hour) of geo-magnetic storms that can overload the power grids, disrupt communications on Earth, & present a hazard to astronauts.

ACE spacecraft has enough propellant on the board to maintain an orbit at L-1 until the year 2024.

More information of the ACE mission can be found in the ACE Mission Paper which is published in

Space Science Reviews