SM41I-01
Exploring Magnetopause Reconnection with MMS
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 08:00
2018 (Moscone West)
James L Burch1, Roy B Torbert2,3, Thomas Earle Moore4, Craig J Pollock5, Barry Mauk6, Stephen A Fuselier3, Rumi Nakamura7, Michael Hesse8, Robert Ergun9, Barbara L Giles8, Tai Phan10 and Daniel N. Baker11, (1)Southwest Research Institute San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States, (2)University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States, (3)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (4)NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (5)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (6)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (7)Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, (8)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (9)Univ Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (10)University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, United States, (11)University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, United States
Abstract:
Magnetospheric Multiscale is a NASA Solar-Terrestrial Probes mission that is designed to conduct a definitive experiment on magnetic reconnection in the boundary regions of the Earth's magnetoshere. Previous missions have established that reconnection occurs somewhere on the magnetopause and in the geomagnetic tail on a nearly continuous basis. Most of the predictions that have been made about reconnection on the MHD and ion scales have been confirmed and new questions posed, particularly at smaller scales. MMS is designed to probe reconnection down to the smallest scales possible thereby allowing the assessment of electron-scale pressure gradients and inertial effects as possible important drivers of magnetic reconnection. Multipoint measurements of 3D electric and magnetic fields and plasma distributions at the required spatial resolution are required along with plasma waves, energetic particles and ion composition to open this new window on reconnection and solve its remaining mysteries. With a wide range of new and vastly improved measurements at 4 locations with separations down to 10 km, MMS is fully operational and nearing the dayside magnetopause where its exploration begins. In this paper results obtained from the first three months of magnetopause crossings will be presented.
