TT22A:
Magnetic Reconnection and NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission


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Session ID#: 52700

Session Description:
NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission was launched in 2015 to study the mysterious process of magnetic reconnection. The process occurs when oppositely directed magnetic field lines effectively break and cross-connect, leading to an often explosive release of magnetic energy that is converted into kinetic energy and heat. Reconnection was discovered in solar flares, but also is a key process allowing material from the Sun to penetrate the magnetic shield (the magnetosphere) of Earth and other planets including Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn, making it important for space weather. The physics allowing magnetic fields to reconnect takes place over small length scales, but the impact of reconnection is felt over extremely large length scales. The MMS mission, a four-satellite mission orbiting Earth and measuring reconnection both sunward and anti-sunward of Earth, was designed to measure the small scale physics of reconnection. MMS has revolutionized our understanding of reconnection at the kinetic scale, revealing key insights about the processes that occur near where magnetic field lines effectively break. This talk will describe the physics of reconnection and where it happens, and discuss some of the many things that MMS has revealed about this important process.
Primary Presenter:  Paul Cassak, West Virginia University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Morgantown, United States
Presenters:  James L Burch, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, United States and Cecilia Norgren, University of Bergen, Space Plasma Physics Group, Bergen, Norway

Cross-Listed:
  • P - Planetary Sciences
  • SH - SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics
  • SM - SPA-Magnetospheric Physics
Index Terms:

6207 Comparative planetology [PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS]
7526 Magnetic reconnection [SOLAR PHYSICS, ASTROPHYSICS, AND ASTRONOMY]
7835 Magnetic reconnection [SPACE PLASMA PHYSICS]
7954 Magnetic storms [SPACE WEATHER]

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