NASA Mission to Measure Earth’s Magnetic Collisions

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When a giant solar explosion arrives at Earth, the squeezed particles race around the planet to the tail of the magnetic bubble over the night side. That sets off more magnetic reconnections, shooting particles back at Earth that induce electrical currents in the ground. The currents can flow into electrical transmission lines, potentially overloading transformers and causing continentwide blackouts.

The equations describing magnetic reconnection can be written simply but not solved. Even the biggest, fastest computers cannot establish what is going on. Thus, scientists are looking to the $1.1 billion NASA mission to provide measurements to guide them.

“We’re trying the find those hot spots out in space,” Roy B. Torbert, deputy principal investigator for the mission, said at a news conference Wednesday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “We do not understand at all what causes the dissipation in plasmas.”

During the two-year mission, four identical octagonal spacecraft, each weighing as much as a compact car, are to fly in a pyramid formation that will let them obtain three-dimensional pictures of the magnetic fields and plasma. The deluge of data could help scientists better predict the timing and effects of solar storms.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/science/space/nasa-mission-to-measure-earths-magnetic-collisions.html?_r=0