NASA Chooses SpaceX for Small Satellite Mission Launch

NASA has chosen SpaceX to launch the Tandem Reconnection and Cusp Electrodynamics Reconnaissance Satellites (TRACERS), a pair of smallsats designed to study space weather and the magnetosphere. The launch is scheduled for no earlier than April 2025 and will be part of a rideshare mission. TRACERS will be the primary payload on a Falcon 9 rocket, and once in sun-synchronous orbit, the spacecraft will investigate magnetic reconnection between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere. The mission is led by the University of Iowa and the spacecraft are being built by Millennium Space Systems.