3 Days in 1 Minute: Stacking the MMS Spacecraft

Scientists Michael Hesse and John Dorelli explain the science objectives of the MMS mission. For More InformationSee [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mms/](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mms/) Related pages

A movie trailer about the MMS mission.Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here. In March 2015, NASA will launch four identical spacecraft to study how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy – a process known as magnetic reconnection. The Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission will provide the first three-dimensional views of this fundamental process that can accelerate particles to nearly the speed of light. MMS uses Earth’s protective magnetic space environment, the magnetosphere, as a natural laboratory to directly measure reconnection. Reconnection is a common processes in our universe; occurring in space near Earth, in the atmosphere of the sun and other stars, in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, and at virtually any boundary between space plasmas, including the boundary between our solar system's heliosphere and interstellar space. For More InformationSee [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mms/](http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mms/) Related pages

Scientist John Dorelli explains the MMS mission's orbit and why the four spacecraft fly in a tetrahedron formation.On its journey, MMS will observe a little-understood, but universal phenomenon called magnetic reconnection, responsible for dramatic re-shaping of the magnetic environment near Earth, often sending intense amounts of energy and fast-moving particles off in a new direction. Not only is this a fundamental physical process that occurs throughout the universe, it is also one of the drivers of space weather events at Earth. To truly understanding the process, requires four identical spacecraft to track how such reconnection events move across and through any given space in 3D. B-roll Bolden and Scolese visting MMS Lab and town hall meeting. NASA Administrator Charles Bolden had a firsthand look at work being done on the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft during a visit to the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Monday, May 12, 2014.Bolden visited Goddard's Integration and Test Facility where the four MMS spacecraft are undergoing testing. The spacecraft were in a rare four-stack arrangement inside a clean room after completing vibration testing. The clean room itself was temporarily altered to allow a close-up view of the approximate 20-foot high collection of four observatories in their launch configuration.In addition to Bolden, MMS project personnel were available to answer questions about the mission, ground testing and preps for launch.During its two-year mission, MMS will explore the mystery of how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy — a process known as magnetic reconnection. The four MMS spacecraft will provide the first three-dimensional views of this fundamental process that occurs throughout our universe. Related pages

MMS beauty pass showing 4 observatories on the dayside. Beauty pass showing the MMS spacecraft flying on the nightside. 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.”Learn more about MMS at www.nasa.gov/mms Related pages

Watch this video on the NASA Goddard's YouTube channel.For complete transcript, click here. It's hard enough to build one spacecraft, but the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) is building four. Together, the spacecraft will unlock the mysteries of magnetic reconnection, when magnetic fields explosively connect and disconnect, transferring energy. Related pages