MMS

Magnetospheric Multiscale

Constellation that investigates Earth's magnetosphere

The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a Solar Terrestrial Probes Program mission within NASA’s Heliophysics Division. The MMS mission, consisting of four identically instrumented spacecraft, uses Earth’s magnetosphere as a laboratory to study magnetic reconnection, a fundamental plasma-physical process that taps the energy stored in a magnetic field and converts it—typically explosively—into heat and kinetic energy in the form of charged particle acceleration and large-scale flows of matter.

Mission Class:

Larger Missions

Mission Status:

Current

LASP Roles:

Data, Mission Operations, Engineering

Science Target:

Earth's Magnetosphere

Mission Focus:

Magnetosphere, Solar Physics, Space Weather

Launch date: March 12, 2015
Prime Mission: 2 years

Lead Institution: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Lead Funding Agency: NASA’s Heliophysics Division

Partners: Southwest Research Institute (SWRI), University of New Hampshire, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHP/APL), Rice University, Austrian Academy of Sciences