The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a Solar-Terrestrial Probe mission comprising four identically instrumented spacecraft that will use Earth's magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of three fundamental plasma processes: magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence. These processes occur in all astrophysical plasma systems but can be studied in situ only in our solar system and most efficiently only in Earth's magnetosphere, where they control the dynamics of the geospace environment and play an important role in the processes known as "space weather."

SMART, for "Solving Magnetospheric Acceleration, Reconnection, and Turbulence," is the name of the MMS science investigation. SMART will be carried out by a team headed by Prinicipal Investigator James L. Burch of Southwest Research Institute and consisting of researchers from a number of U.S. and foreign institutions. A particular focus of the SMART investigation will be on magnetic reconnection, a process that explosively converts magnetic energy into heat and the kinetic energy of charged particles.

New! Download the MMS poster. large (3.4 MB) | small (1.1 MB)

Artist's concept of the MMS spacecraft constellation. MMS was ranked as the highest-priority moderate-size mission in National Research Council's 2002 Solar and Space Physics Decadal Survey.

A brief summary of the SMART investigation can be found on the SMART Fact Sheet, which can be downloaded by clicking on the link below. Those interested in more detail about the investigation can also download sections from the original proposal and the concept study report (CSR) as well as a reprint of an article that published in "Review of Scientific Instruments" on the RF technique used in the ion composition instrument.
Harry Petschek Symposium on Magnetic Reconnection
A symposium on magnetic reconnection, named in honor of one of the fathers of reconnection theory, will be held on March 21-23, 2006, at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland. Details can be found at the symposium web site.
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