Global Geospace Science

GGS has primary scientific objective of its own:[1] a) Measure the mass, momentum and energy flow and their time variability throughout the solar wind-magnetosphere- ionosphere system that comprises the geospace environment; b) Improve the understanding of plasma processes that control the collective behavior of various components of geospace and trace their cause and effect relationships through the system; c) Access the importance to the terrestrial environment of variations in energy input to the atmosphere caused by geospace plasma processes.

Geospace is defined as the near-Earth space environment and it encompasses the regions toward the Sun where the heliosphere is disturbed by the Earth's magnetic field.

It was designed to address the goal of detailed understanding of the global features of the geospace system by integrating a number of key elements in its planning.

First, the acquisition of coordinated and concurrent data from spacecraft placed in key orbits that allow the synergistically selected onboard instruments to sample simultaneously the principal regions of geospace where energy and momentum are transported and stored.

[2] The Polar satellite, launched on February 24, 1996, is in a highly elliptical, 86 deg inclination orbit with a period of about 17.5 hours.