LONDON: NASA successfully launched and placed in orbits four Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) spacecraft using which researchers will be looking to unravel the mysteries behind magnetic reconnection. To study the phenomenon, NASA has packed each of the MMS observatories with 11 scientific experiments, and 25 separate sensors.
NASA has said that the instruments will measure energies of charged particles, the movement of plasma, and electric and magnetic fields, with unprecedentedly high – on the order of milliseconds — time resolution and accuracy.
According to details provided by NASA, most of the scientific instruments are packed inside the observatory, underneath the top deck, but the two magnetometer booms and one of the two Fly’s Eye Energetic Particle Spectrometers, or FEEPS, are mounted on the underside of the bottom deck with the second FEEPS on top of the top deck.
There are two 41-foot (12.5-meter) Axial Double Probe booms carrying the electric field sensors. These two are stored inside the thrust tube and will be deployed once in orbit.
From the broader perspective the experiments and instruments are divided into three investigations or groups dubbed Hot Plasma Suite; Energetic Particles Detector Suite; and Fields Suite.
The Hot Plasma Suite group of instruments will be observing the nature of the charged gas, or plasma, present during magnetic reconnection; Energetic Particles Detector Suite will observe the fast-moving, energetic particles; and Field Suite will observe electric and magnetic fields and waves.
