MMS Narrated Orbit

  • Released Tuesday, May 6, 2014
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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.

Watch this video on the NASAexplorer YouTube channel.

Orbit video without narration

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

This page was originally published on Tuesday, May 6, 2014.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, November 14, 2023 at 12:18 AM EST.

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Tapes

This visualization originally appeared on the following tapes:
  • MMS Narrated Orbit (ID: 2014018)
    Friday, May 16, 2014 at 4:00AM
    Produced by - Will Duquette (NASA)