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NASA preps mission to probe Earth's magnetic mysteries

Magnetospheric Multiscale mission to launch March 2015

Video Next March, all going well, NASA will launch a bunch of spacecraft to try and unravel the mechanism of what's called magnetic reconnection, a process by which Earth's magnetic fields connect and disconnect.

It's not only a question of fundamental science: during magnetic reconnection, there's an explosive release of energy that's a driver of space weather. For example, geomagnetic storms, solar flares and coronal mass ejections all involve reconnection events that release the energy stored in magnetic fields.

Reconnection events occur around Earth, partly because of its interaction with the extended solar magnetic field, and that provides a natural laboratory that NASA wants to observe with the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission: four spacecraft that will fly through active regions around Earth to build a 3D picture of changes to the magnetic field as reconnection events happen.

An Atlas V 421 launcher is due to lift the MMS payloads on March 12, 2015, and the last of the units were delivered to Florida on November 18 for launch preparations.

The four MMS units will be stacked as shown in the NASA video below, and have to be deployed one-by-one. Once that's happened, NASA says the spacecraft will move into a pyramid configuration and deploy their booms before flying through reconnection regions that are only “a few miles thick” but can generate explosions “many times the size of Earth.” ®

Youtube Video

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