NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) observatories are shown here in the clean room being processed for a March 12 launch from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
Image Credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky
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Final preparations
are underway for the launch of NASA’s quartet of Magnetospheric
Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft, which constitute the first space mission
dedicated to the study of magnetic reconnection. This fundamental
process occurs throughout the universe where magnetic fields connect and
disconnect with an explosive release of energy.
“Magnetic reconnection is one of the most important drivers of space
weather events,” said Jeff Newmark, interim director of the Heliophysics
Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.“Eruptive solar flares,
coronal mass ejections, and geomagnetic storms all involve the release,
through reconnection, of energy stored in magnetic fields.Space weather
events can affect modern technological systems such as communications
networks, GPS navigation, and electrical power grids.”
The launch of MMS, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, will
be managed by the Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center
in Florida. Liftoff is targeted for
10:44 p.m. EDT Thursday March 12 from Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.
The spacecraft will begin science operations in September. Unlike
previous missions to observe the evidence of magnetic reconnection
events, MMS will have sufficient resolution to measure the
characteristics of ongoing reconnection events as they occur.
The mission consists of four identical space observatories that will
provide the first three-dimensional view of magnetic reconnection.
Because the observatories will fly through reconnection regions in a
tight formation, in less than a second, key sensors on each spacecraft
are designed to measure the space environment at rates faster than any
previous mission.
“MMS engineers have completed final observatory closeout procedures and checks and are awaiting transport to the launch pad
tomorrow
for integration with the Atlas rocket,” said Craig Tooley, MMS project
manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
“The team is in high spirits and ready to get these technological
marvels in space.”
The mission observes reconnection directly in Earth’s protective
magnetic space environment known as the magnetosphere. By studying
reconnection in this local, natural laboratory, MMS helps us understand
reconnection elsewhere, such as the atmosphere of the sun, the vicinity
of black holes and neutron stars, and the boundary between our solar
system and interstellar space.
“This is the perfect time for this mission,” said Jim Burch,
principal investigator of the MMS instrument suite science team at
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas. “MMS is a
crucial next step in advancing the science of magnetic reconnection.
Studying magnetic reconnection near Earth will unlock the ability to
understand how this process works throughout the entire universe.”
MMS is led by Goddard, which also built, integrated and tested the
four spacecraft. The MMS Instrument Suite Science Team is led by SwRI.
The spacecraft are controlled and operated from the MMS Mission
Operations Center at Goddard. Science operations planning and instrument
command sequence development are performed at the MMS Science
Operations Center at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for
Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder.
More information about the MMS mission is online at:
http://www.nasa.gov/mms