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Magnetospheric Multiscale Overview and Science Objectives
Torbert, R. B.; Burch, J. L.; Moore, T. E. +1 more
Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS), a NASA four-spacecraft constellation mission launched on March 12, 2015, will investigate magnetic reconnection in the boundary regions of the Earth's magnetosphere, particularly along its dayside boundary with the solar wind and the neutral sheet in the magnetic tail. The most important goal of MMS is to conduct a…
Oblique Whistler-Mode Waves in the Earth's Inner Magnetosphere: Energy Distribution, Origins, and Role in Radiation Belt Dynamics
Agapitov, Oleksiy; Krasnoselskikh, Vladimir; Artemyev, Anton +3 more
In this paper we review recent spacecraft observations of oblique whistler-mode waves in the Earth's inner magnetosphere as well as the various consequences of the presence of such waves for electron scattering and acceleration. In particular, we survey the statistics of occurrences and intensity of oblique chorus waves in the region of the outer …
Magnetohydrodynamic Oscillations in the Solar Corona and Earth's Magnetosphere: Towards Consolidated Understanding
Zimovets, I. V.; Nakariakov, V. M.; Jelínek, P. +9 more
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) oscillatory processes in different plasma systems, such as the corona of the Sun and the Earth's magnetosphere, show interesting similarities and differences, which so far received little attention and remain under-exploited. The successful commissioning within the past ten years of THEMIS, Hinode, STEREO and SDO spacecra…
Active Spacecraft Potential Control Investigation
Escoubet, C. P.; Nakamura, R.; Svenes, K. +6 more
In tenuous plasma the floating potential of sunlit spacecraft reaches tens of volts, positive. The corresponding field disturbs measurements of the ambient plasma by electron and ion sensors and can reduce micro-channel plate lifetime in electron detectors owing to large fluxes of attracted photoelectrons. Also the accuracy of electric field measu…
What Can We Learn about Magnetotail Reconnection from 2D PIC Harris-Sheet Simulations?
Goldman, M. V.; Newman, D. L.; Lapenta, G.
The Magnetosphere Multiscale Mission (MMS) will provide the first opportunity to probe electron-scale physics during magnetic reconnection in Earth's magnetopause and magnetotail. This article will address only tail reconnection—as a non-steady-state process in which the first reconnected field lines advance away from the x-point in flux pile-up f…
The Electron Drift Instrument for MMS
Nakamura, R.; Baumjohann, W.; Torbert, R. B. +21 more
The Electron Drift Instrument (EDI) on the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission measures the in-situ electric and magnetic fields using the drift of a weak beam of test electrons that, when emitted in certain directions, return to the spacecraft after one or more gyrations. This drift is related to the electric field and, to a lesser extent, th…
Theory and Modeling for the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission
Aunai, N.; Hesse, M.; Gombosi, T. +8 more
The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will provide measurement capabilities, which will exceed those of earlier and even contemporary missions by orders of magnitude. MMS will, for the first time, be able to measure directly and with sufficient resolution key features of the magnetic reconnection process, down to the critical electron scales…
Establishing the Context for Reconnection Diffusion Region Encounters and Strategies for the Capture and Transmission of Diffusion Region Burst Data by MMS
Eastwood, J. P.; Fujimoto, M.; Phan, T. D. +4 more
This paper describes the efforts of our Inter-Disciplinary Scientist (IDS) team to (a) establish the large-scale context for reconnection diffusion region encounters by MMS at the magnetopause and in the magnetotail, including the distinction between X-line and O-line encounters, that would help the identification of diffusion regions in spacecraf…
Mission Oriented Support and Theory (MOST) for MMS—the Goddard Space Flight Center/University of California Los Angeles Interdisciplinary Science Program
Hwang, Kyoung-Joo; Goldstein, Melvyn L.; El-Alaoui, Mostafa +8 more
The MOST IDS team was tasked with focusing on two general areas: The first was to participate with the Fast Plasma Investigation (FPI) team in the development of virtual detectors that model the instrument responses of the MMS FPI sensors. The virtual instruments can be "flown through" both simulation data (from magnetohydrodynamic, hybrid, and ki…