NASA has launched four identical spacecraft on a billion-dollar mission to study the explosive give-and-take of the Earth and sun's magnetic fields.
The unmanned Atlas rocket - and NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft - soared into a clear late-night sky on Thursday, right on time, to cheers and applause.
The quartet will be launched into an oblong orbit stretching tens of thousands of kilometres into the magnetosphere - nearly halfway to the moon at one point.
They will fly in pyramid formation, between 10km and 400km apart, to provide 3-D views of magnetic reconnection on the smallest of scales.
Magnetic reconnection is what happens when magnetic fields like those around Earth and the sun come together, break apart, then come together again, releasing vast energy.
This repeated process drives the aurora, as well as solar storms that can disrupt communications and power on Earth. Data from this two-year mission should help scientists better understand so-called space weather.
Each observatory resembles a giant octagonal wheel, stretching more than 3 metres across and one metre high, and weighing 1,300kg apiece. They're numbered and stacked like tyres on top of the rocket, with No. 4 popping free first more than an hour after liftoff, followed every five minutes by another.
Once the long, sensor-laden booms are extended a few days into the flight, each spacecraft could span a baseball field.
The findings from the $US1.1 billion ($A1.43 billion) mission will be useful in understanding magnetic reconnection throughout the universe.
Closer to home, space weather scientists along with everyone on Earth hopefully will benefit.
"We're not setting out here to solve space weather," Burch said.
"We're setting out to learn the fundamental features of magnetic reconnection because that's what drives space weather."
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