Spacecraft Cleanroom Goes Green

01.13.12 – Goddard Team Builds State-of-the-Art Facility for New Sun-Earth Mission

When it launches in 2014, NASA's new Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission will give scientists unprecedented insights into a little-understood physical process at the heart all space weather. This process, known as magnetic reconnection, sparks solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other phenomena that can imperil Earth-orbiting spacecraft and even power grids on terra firma.

MMS's assignment is to study this mysterious process that occurs when magnetic fields cross and reconnect, releasing magnetic energy in the form of heat and charged particle kinetic energy. But this is just part of the story.

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The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a Solar Terrestrial Probes 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.”

Press Releases

04.29.11 – Goddard Building Instrument To Study Reconnection
10.01.10 – Q&A: Missions, Meetings, and the Radial Tire Model of the Magnetosphere
09.03.10 – NASA’s Magnetospheric Mission Passes Major Milestone
07.21.09 – NASA’s Magnetospheric MultiScale Mission Takes a Step Closer to Solving the Mystery Behind Magnetic Reconnection
12.19.08 – NASA Goddard and University of Idaho Create Solutions for 2 NASA Missions

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Spacecraft Assembly Images

NASA Engineers celebrate the teamwork necessary to build the first of four flight Power Systems Electronics and Engine Valve Driver System (PSEES) chassis.

Earth’s magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of magnetic reconnection

The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission will use four identical spacecraft, variably spaced in Earth orbit, to make three-dimensional measurements of magnetospheric boundary regions and examine the process of magnetic reconnection. Credit: Southwest Research Institute

Mission Status

Launch Readiness Date (LRD): August 2014
Phase C/D: Design & Development
Mission Highlights – As of January 19, 2012:

Progress continues in all areas of spacecraft and instrument flight manufacturing and testing with flight units proceeding thru various stages of acceptance testing. Key accomplishments include a successful Fields Central Electronics Box (CEB) Pre Environmental Review (PER), completion of the Power System and Engine Valve Drive Electronics Systems (PSEES) Flight #1 thermal-vacuum testing, and the beginning of spacecraft #1 Deck integration work in the MMS Clean Room. The Instrument Suite remains on schedule for a September delivery to the Observatory.

Multimedia

MMS Orbit Animation

This animation shows the orbits of Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, a Solar Terrestrial Probes mission comprising of four identically instrumented spacecraft that will study the Earth’s magnetosphere.

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