ISEE-1

The International Sun-Earth Explorer 1 (ISEE-1) was launched on the 22nd of October of 1977 from Cape Canaveral, United States. It was part of the mother/daughter/heliocentric mission, which also included ISEE-2 and ISEE-3. The ISEE-1 was launched together with ISEE-2 on the 22 October 1977, and they were operating for 10 years.

The project was a cooperative mission between NASA and European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) (later European Space Agency (ESA)) designed to study the interaction between the Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind.

The purposes of the mission were:

• to investigate solar-terrestrial relationships at the outermost boundaries of the Earth's magnetosphere
• to examine in detail the structure of the solar wind near the Earth and the shock wave that forms the interface between the solar wind and the Earth's magnetosphere
• to investigate motions of and mechanisms operating in the plasma sheets
• to continue the investigation of cosmic rays and solar flare effects in the interplanetary region near 1 AU