Wind Wind is a spin stabilized spacecraft launched with a Delta II rocket on November 1, 1994. After several orbits through the magnetosphere,
Wind was placed in a
Lissajous orbit around the L1 Lagrange point -- more than 200 Re upstream of Earth -- in early 2004 to observe the unperturbed solar wind that is about to impact the magnetosphere of Earth.
Wind was later inserted into a halo orbit about L1 in 2020.
Polar 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. Within the Sun-Earth Connections fleet, Polar has the responsibility for multi-wavelength imaging of the aurora, measuring the entry of plasma into the polar magnetosphere and the geomagnetic tail, the flow of plasma to and from the ionosphere, and the deposition of particle energy in the ionosphere and upper atmosphere. Polar was launched to observe the polar magnetosphere and, as its orbit has precessed with time, has observed the equatorial inner magnetosphere and is now progressing toward an extended southern hemisphere campaign. ==References==