SM42A-08
3D Ion and Electron Distribution Function Measurements from the Fast Plasma Investigation on the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission
Thursday, 17 December 2015: 11:56
2018 (Moscone West)
Barbara L Giles1, Craig J Pollock2, Levon A Avanov1, Alexander C Barrie3, James L Burch4, Michael O Chandler5, George B Clark6, Victoria N Coffey5, Charles Dickson7, John Dorelli1, Robert E Ergun8, Stephen A Fuselier9, Daniel J Gershman10, Ulrik Gliese1, Matthew P Holland1, Arthur D Jacques1, Stephen Kreisler1, Benoit Lavraud11, Elizabeth MacDonald1, Barry Mauk12, Thomas Earle Moore13, Toshifumi Mukai14, Rumi Nakamura15, William R Paterson1, Amy Catherine Rager16, Yoshifumi Saito17, Chad Salo1, Jean-Andre Sauvaud18, Roy B Torbert9,19, Adolfo F. Vinas1 and Shoichiro Yokota14, (1)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (2)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Heliophysics Sci. Div., Greenbelt, MD, United States, (3)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, (SGT Inc.), Greenbelt, MD, United States, (4)Southwest Research Institute San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, United States, (5)NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AL, United States, (6)Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, United States, (7)AS and D, Inc., Beltsville, MD, United States, (8)University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, United States, (9)Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, United States, (10)NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Solar System Exploration Division, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (11)IRAP, Toulouse, France, (12)Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins, Laurel, MD, United States, (13)NASA Goddard Space Flight Ctr, Greenbelt, MD, United States, (14)ISAS Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara, Japan, (15)Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria, (16)Catholic University of America, Physics, Washington, DC, United States, (17)JAXA Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Sagamihara, Japan, (18)IRAP/CNRS, Toulouse, France, (19)Univ of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
Abstract:
The primary focus of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, launched in March 2015, is magnetic reconnection and associated processes. Understanding hinges critically on the kinetic physics that allows reconnection to take place. The Fast Plasma Investigation (FPI) provides electron and ion distribution functions at 4.5s cadence and, for select periods of time, at cadences of 30ms for electrons and 150ms for ions. These select time periods are chosen after in situ acquisition based on inspection of the low resolution data. Thus the FPI provides, independent of spacecraft spin rate, the time resolution needed to resolve the small, fast-moving reconnection diffusion regions. The first mission phase focuses on the dayside magnetopause and this presentation is intended to demonstrate the capabilities of FPI to resolve the important spatial scales relevant to the reconnection process. Magnetopause and other boundary crossings will be examined and the phase-space trajectories identified at the tetrahedral satellite locations through analysis of the 3D distribution functions.
