Feb. 20, 2013 On Earth, scientists can observe weather patterns,
and more importantly can predict them, through the use of tens
of thousands of weather observatories scattered around the
globe. Up in the space surrounding Earth -- a space that seethes
with its own space weather made of speeding charged particles
and constantly changing magnetic fields that can impact
satellites -- there are only a handful of spacecraft to watch
for solar and magnetic storms. The number of observatories has
been growing over the last six years, however. Today these
spacecraft have begun to provide the first multipoint
measurements to better understand space weather events as they
move through space, something impossible to track with a single
spacecraft. Helping to anchor that team of spacecraft is a NASA
mission called THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale
Interactions during Substorms). THEMIS launched on Feb. 17,
2007, with five nearly identical spacecraft nestled inside a
Delta II rocket. Simply orchestrating how t