SM41I-02
First MMS Observations of High Time Resolution 3D Electric and Magnetic fields at the Dayside Magnetopause.
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 08:15
2018 (Moscone West)
Roy B Torbert1, James L Burch2, Christopher T Russell3, Werner Magnes4, Robert E Ergun5, Per-Arne Lindqvist6, Olivier Le Contel7, Hans Vaith1, John Macri8, Steven Myers8, David Rau9, Jerry Needell8, Brian King8, Mark Granoff8, Mark Chutter9, Ivan Dors9, Matthew R Argall1, Jason R Shuster1, Goran Olsson6, Goran Tage Marklund10, Yuri V Khotyaintsev11, Anders I Eriksson11, Craig Kletzing12, Scott R Bounds12, Brian J Anderson13, Wolfgang Baumjohann14, Manfred Steller4, Kenneth R Bromund15, Guan Le15, Rumi Nakamura16, Robert J Strangeway17, Hannes Karl Leinweber18, Scott Tucker19, Jim Westfall19, David Fischer20, Ferdinand Plaschke20, Craig J Pollock21, Barbara L Giles15, Thomas Earle Moore22, Barry Mauk23 and Stephen A Fuselier2, (1)University of New Hampshire Main Campus, Durham, NH, United States, (2)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (3)University of California Los Angeles, IGPP/EPSS, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (4)Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria, (5)University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Research, Boulder, CO, United States, (6)KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, (7)Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (UMR7648), CNRS/Ecole Polytechnique/UPMC/Univ. Paris Sud/Obs. de Paris, Paris, France, (8)Univ New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (9)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (10)Royal Inst Technology, KTH/EES, Stockholm, Sweden, (11)IRF Swedish Institute of Space Physics Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden, (12)University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, United States, (13)Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, (14)Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria, (15)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (16)Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, (17)University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (18)Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, United States, (19)University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (20)IWF Institute for Space Research, Graz, Austria, (21)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (22)NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (23)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States
Abstract:
The electrodynamics at the magnetopause is key to our understanding of ion and electron acceleration within reconnection regions. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) fleet of four spacecraft was launched into its Phase-1 equatorial orbit of 12 Re apogee specifically to investigate these regions at the Earth’s magnetopause. In addition to a comprehensive suite of particle measurements, MMS makes very high time resolution 3D electric and magnetic field measurements of high accuracy using flux-gate, search coil, 3-axis double probe, and electron drift sensors. In September 2015, the MMS fleet will begin to encounter the dusk-side magnetopause in its initial configuration of approximately 160 km separation, allowing investigation of the spatial and temporal characteristics of important electrodynamics during reconnection. Using these field and particle measurements, we present first observations of 3D magnetic and electric fields (including their parallel component), and inferred current sheets, during active magnetopause crossings using the highest time resolution data available on MMS.
