Space Mission "Clusterion": Investigation Of The Dynamical Processes In The Ionosphere Using A Cluster Of "Yuzhsat" Satellites

The "ClusterIon" is a fundamental scientific project devoted to the study of near-Earth space. The project is a response to the challenges posed by the modern development of knowledge about the Space Weather and the ionospheric responses to distributed over the globe natural and artificial sources of energy. Along with this, the project "ClusterIon" is a logical continuation of previous ionospheric missions realized throughout the space age, such as Dynamics Explorer 2 (1982-1984), Freja (1992-1993), DEMETER (2004-2010) as well as the upcoming" Ionosat-Micro" experiment onboard the "Microsat-M" satellite. The main innovation of the project is the launching into the ionosphere of a cluster of several (presumably 3) spacecraft equipped with identical sets of scientific instruments in order to provide simultaneous measurement of gas-plasma and electrodynamics parameters of the ionosphere. "ClusterIon" payload composition: Ion drift-meter ID, Electron temperature and concentration probe ETP; Magneto-Wave Complex MWC, including vector flux-gate magnetometer FGM, vector search-coil magnetometer IM and 2 electric potential probes EP.