NASA Teams Up with JAXA for SCOPE Mission

[orrery]

SCOPE is a mission that should interest everyone here.

http://sprg.isas.jaxa.jp/scope_en/es.html
http://www.unh.edu/research/blog/2011/1 ... e-missions

Another that just launched today is DICE
http://www.sdl.usu.edu/programs/dice

Looks like the Plasma Army is on the move.

[Osmosis]

I noticed the mention of 'magnetic reconnection' as one of the Scope study subjects. Poor people

[jjohnson]

Thanks for posting these missions, orrery. There is usually little publicity around small satellite and CUBEsat launches, and I miss a lot of them. Some may be very important. in the data that they gather, to the EU. Sure, they're going to look for magnetic reconnection events, but how do you observe one of those in real space and time. There are no loose field lines whipping around and then suddenly reconnecting, at least not as shown in numerical sims. That idea may occur to these researchers after a period of time. With luck, that may lead them to question what is really going on there, if the can't show direct evidence of reconnecting field lines.

And with luck they may map current flows, as they already state that they know that ions and electrons are influenced to move under the influence of magnetic and electric fields, and vice versa. Can the solar "wind" be better called a current? Does it tend to re-form from a current sheet to a current filament under the influence of magnetic fields? What is its composition, and which way are the components moving? How does the solar "wind" behave in the higher and lower latitudes relative to the ecliptic, within the heliosphere? There are potentially highly useful data sets which might be uncovered in these types of plasma measurement experiments in space, and near the Sun.

Wish we had someone on the teams asking the right questions from the EU perspective.

Jim

[tayga]

Exciting stuff. I see MHD is still on the agenda but the more data we get the clearer the picture will be and the greater will be the strain on incorrect models. So, go NASA!