SM13E-4218:
Magnetospheric Multiscale Science Operations, Data Acquisition, Data Management, and Data Access and Archiving

Monday, 15 December 2014
Barbara L Giles1, Daniel N. Baker2, Stephen Fuselier3, Robert Ergun4, Steven M Petrinec5, Tai-Duc Phan6, Mitsuo Oka6, James L Burch3, Roy B Torbert7, Thomas Earle Moore8, Christopher K Pankratz2, Jason Beech2, Lonnie J Riesberg2, Russ S Panneton2, Frederick D Wilder9, Katherine Goodrich9 and William S Lewis3, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, (3)Southwest Research Institute San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States, (4)Univ Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (5)Lockheed Martin STAR Labs, Palo Alto, CA, United States, (6)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (7)Univ New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (8)NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (9)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission and operations are designed to provide maximum reconnection science. Mission phases and the tetrahedral spacecraft formations are chosen to investigate reconnection at the dayside magnetopause and in the magnetotail. At the dayside, the orbits maximize encounters with the magnetopause in regions where the probability of encountering the reconnection diffusion region is high. In the magnetotail, the orbits maximize encounters with the neutral sheet, where reconnection is known to occur episodically. The mission will collect several gigabits per day of particles and field data. Management of these data requires effective selection, transmission, analysis, and storage of data in the ground segment of the mission. Following MMS launch, the Science Operations Center (SOC), located at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) in Boulder, Colorado, will be actively responsible for instrument suite operations, as well as data production, management, distribution, and archiving of the MMS science data sets. Throughout, the MMS instrument teams work closely with the SOC in conducting instrument operations. The teams will be responsible for much of the science data production activities, with the SOC serving as the Mission Archive and the central node from which data are made available to the science community. The SOC will also handle raw instrument and spacecraft telemetry, calibration data, ephemerides, attitude and other ancillary data needed to support scientific use. Documentation and metadata describing data products, algorithms, instrument calibrations, validation, and data quality will be provided by MMS instrument teams and made available to the user community. A key component of ultimate MMS mission success will be the exploitation of high-resolution burst data products through an innovative burst system and the “Scientist-in-the-Loop” (SITL) concept for key interval identification, downlink, and analysis.