The life cycle of the Magnetospheric MultiScale Mission (MMS).
Starting a NASA Mission
In 2003 NASA selected two scientific teams that had the scientific objective "to explore and understand the fundamental plasma-physics processes of magnetic reconnection, particle acceleration and turbulence in the Earth's magnetosphere." These three processes are critical to understand plasmas in space and the reaction of the Earth's Magnetosphere and Solar Wind. The scientific study being conducted on the MMS mission will be carried out by James L. Burch and his team from Southwest Research Institute. This will be the SMART investigation, or "Solving Magnetospheric Acceleration, Reconnection, and Turbulence" which is the process that coverts magnetic energy into heat and kinetic energy. These teams are always looking for new, qualified recruits to work on the science team because of the time it will take for MMS-SMART to complete its space flight and orbits.
Building and Launching the Atlas 5
The MMS Project is planned to launch in 2013. Until this date different teams of the mission will be designing, planning, and building in order to be ready for launch. For example some instruments that Southwest Research will be responsable for will include a hot plasma instrument, fields instrument, energetic particles, and ion composition (HPCA) insturments. The University of New Hamshire has recieved $38 Million in order to construct two electron drift instruments for each of the four spacecraft over the next eight years. This instrument will measure electric fields and electron drifts in space.
NASA NEWS ABOUT MMS MISSION
OTHERS INVOLVED IN THE MMS MISSION
- University of New Hampshire
- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
- The Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins Universtiy
- Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio
- Austrian Academy of Sciences
- The French Center for Terrestrial and Planetary Environments
- The Swedish Royal Institute of Technology
- Technical University of Braunschweig
- The University of California at Los Angeles
- The University of Colorado at Boulder
- The University of Iowa
- and Rice University
