Cross Scale

Cross Scale is one of the mission concepts currently under study within the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme of the European Space Agency ESA. The scientific objective of the mission is multi-scale investigation of the fundamental space plasma processes in the Earth's magnetosphere. OHB has provided satellite design contribution to the industrial assessment study recently performed under ESA contract.

The mission involves a constellation of seven satellites placed in a highly elliptic Earth orbit to cover the scientifically most relevant parts of the Earth's magnetosphere for investigation of nonlinear coupling of electron, ion and fluid scale processes, which control the key plasma phenomena of shocks, reconnection and turbulence. The Cross Scale satellites form a constellation allowing four dimensional scientific measurements during the whole mission. Always four satellites provide three spatial dimensions when flying in a tetrahedron constellation. Two such constellations can be realised by seven satellites when one of them is part of both constellations. By varying the size of the two tetrahedrons, the fourth dimension for the measurements is provided. In this way, plasma processes within Earth's magnetosphere can be investigated simultaneously, covering the three scientifically interesting scales, including the electrons scale (~10 km tetrahedron size), the ions scale (100 km - 1000 km) and fluid scale (5000 km - 10000 km). If realised in an international cooperation frame, up to twelve satellites could finally form the Cross Scale constellation, allowing the simultaneous investigation of all three scales.

In frame of the industrial study recently concluded, OHB was responsible for the detailed design of the Cross Scale MTP satellite platform, including accommodation of the variety of the science payload instruments. The Cross Scale satellites have been optimised to accommodate different set of science instrumentation while keeping the platform design identical.