NASA has formally ended the Geotail spacecraft's 30-year mission studying the Earth's magnetosphere after months of repeated attempts to repair its last data recorder failed.
Launched on July 24, 1992, Geotail was put to work probing the protective bubble that prevents harmful solar rays and cosmic radiation from hitting our planet.Geotail flew through the magnetosphere on a journey that took it as far out as 193,000km (120,000 miles) into the planet's magnetotail.