NASA spacecraft detects mysterious substorm at Earth’s magnetic tail

The illustration shows magnetic field lines around the Earth reconnecting in the magnetotail, usually one of the first signs of a substorm.Southwest Research Institute researchers have been examining the data collected by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale mission to solve a long-standing mystery surrounding “substorms.”

Back in 2015, NASA specifically launched this MMS mission to study this magnetic region closely and decipher how the magnetic fields of the Sun and Earth reconnect. Magnetic reconnection happens when lines in a magnetic field join, separate, and then reconnect again. The MMS spacecraft has been exploring this region to search for signs of magnetic reconnection, which triggers substorms. In 2017, MMS made an unexpected discovery: evidence of magnetic reconnection without the associated substorm.

“We want to see how the local physics observed by MMS affects the entire global magnetosphere,” said Andy Marshall, a postdoctoral researcher at SwRI.

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