Multiple spacecraft observations of wave features provide more information about the wave than a single spacecraft can..

below: a single spacecraft registers a wave as a disturbance, with no indication of the direction (it can also
be hard to identify the wave mode). Compare this with multiple spacecraft measurements (next figure).

below: this figure shows how 3 spacecraft can uniquely identify the direction of a wave on a 2D plane (and we need 4 spacecraft to do the same job in a 3D volume).

 
 

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Images by Rosalind Mist and Andrew Fazakerley - please do NOT reproduce without permission
Last updated on 07/08/00 by Sarah Szita