In a bid to study the explosive give-and-take of the earth and sun's magnetic fields, NASA launched four identical spacecraft on Thursday. It’s a billion dollar mission and began with the flight of the unmanned Atlas rocket – and NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft - into a clear-night sky. The launch took place on scheduled time.

NASA has planned to put the four spacecraft into an oblong orbit into the magnetosphere. The orbit stretches tens of thousands of miles into the magnetosphere. The spacecraft are being instructed to fly in pyramid formation, between 6 miles and 250 miles apart. This will help NASA researchers to get access to 3-D views of magnetic reconnection on the smallest of scales.

The researchers explained magnetic reconnection as a phenomenon when magnetic fields like those around earth and the sun come together, break apart, then come together again, releasing vast energy. The repetition of this process causes the aurora and solar storms that are known to have the potential of disrupting communications and power on earth. Gaining access to data from this two-year mission will prove to be boon to understanding space weather.

The mission officials have revealed that after the long, sensor-laden booms extend in a few days, each spacecraft could span a baseball field.

“We’re not setting out here to solve space weather. We’re setting out to learn the fundamental features of magnetic reconnection because that’s what drives space weather”, said principal investigator Jim Burch from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

Researchers are confident that the findings from the $1.1 will help them gain significant insights into magnetic reconnection throughout the universe. The mission will benefit everyone, not just space weather scientists, said researchers.