What Is Earth’s Magnetosphere?
Enveloping our planet and protecting us from the fury of the Sun is a giant bubble of magnetism called the magnetosphere. It deflects most of the solar material sweeping towards us from our star at 1 million miles per hour or more. Without the magnetosphere, the relentless action of these solar particles could strip the Earth of its protective layers, which shield us from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. It’s clear that this magnetic bubble was key to helping Earth develop into a habitable planet.
Enveloping our planet and protecting us from the fury of the Sun is the magnetosphere, a key to helping Earth develop into a habitable planet. Credit:
Understanding and Studying the Magnetosphere
Understanding our magnetosphere is a key element to helping scientists someday forecast space weather that can affect Earth’s technology. Extreme space weather events can disrupt communications networks,
Magnetic Reconnection and the MMS Mission
How does this happen? Magnetic lines of force converge and reconfigure, resulting in magnetic energy and charged-particles flying off at intense speeds. Scientists have been trying to learn why this crisscrossing of magnetic field lines – called magnetic reconnection – triggers such a violent explosion, opening the rifts into the magnetosphere.
NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission, or MMS, was launched in March 2015 to observe the electron physics of magnetic reconnection for the first time. Bristling with energetic particle detectors and magnetic sensors, the four MMS spacecraft flew in close formation to areas on the front side of Earth’s magnetosphere where magnetic reconnection occurs. MMS has since been conducting a similar hunt in the magnetosphere’s tail.
MMS complements missions from NASA and partner agencies, such as THEMIS, Cluster, and Geotail, contributing critical new details to the ongoing study of Earth’s magnetosphere. Together, data from these investigations not only help unravel the fundamental physics of space, but also help improve space weather forecasting.