KSC-84PC-0228

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- At Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, British engineers conduct tests on the United Kingdom Subsatellite, part of the three-spacecraft international Active Magnetospheric Particle Tracer Explorer AMPTE mission scheduled for launch on Aug. 9, 1984 aboard a Delta rocket. The 172-pound UKS contains a comprehensive set of plasma measuring instruments to record the effects of chemical clouds released by the West German built Ion Release Module. The other AMPTE spacecraft – the Charged Composition Explorer CCEUnited States) – will operate far below, from inside the Earth’s magnetosphere, where it will track the ionized clouds as it is swept along by the solar wind. With the CCE studying this activity from below, and the IRM and UKS studying it from above, scientists expect to acquire valuable new data on exactly how the solar wind interacts with the Earth’s magnetic fields. Photo Credit: NASA