Rosetta The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission is a milestone in space exploration as it has successfully chased, gone into orbit around, and landed a probe on a comet. Rosetta is studying the Jupiter-family comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with a combination of remote sensing and in situ measurements. After a 10-year tour through the solar system, Rosetta arrived at comet 67P on August 6, 2014 and deployed the Philae lander on November 12, 2014. The main goal of Rosetta is to characterize the environment surrounding the comet and the comet nucleus as the comet penetrates further into the inner solar system. Rosetta will [...]

New Horizons New Horizons is a NASA mission that is exploring the outer edges of our solar system, and is the first mission to study Pluto and its moons. The main goal of New Horizons is to expand our knowledge of the primitive icy bodies and dwarf planets beyond the gas giants in our solar system. Along with a fly-by of the last unexplored planet in our solar system, New Horizons will also be studying Kuiper Belt Objects beyond the orbit of Pluto. The spacecraft is equipped with several cameras and spectrometers, plasma instruments to study the solar wind and other [...]

Magnetospheric Multiscale The NASA Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission, headed by a team of scientists from SwRI and several other institutions, is a four-spacecraft constellation that will study the microphysics of the dayside and nightside magnetic reconnection diffusion regions. Magnetic reconnection is a universal process that happens throughout the solar system, in astrophysical objects, and in laboratory plasmas. While the physical processes that allow for reconnection to happen are on the single-particle scale, the effects of reconnection at Earth and other planets are global. MMS will "unlock the secrets of reconnection" with a suite of instruments capable of characterizing the electromagnetic plasma [...]

Juno The goal of the Juno mission is to investigate the origin, interior structure, atmospheric composition, atmospheric dynamics, and polar magnetosphere of Jupiter. Juno launched in August 2011 and was inserted into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Juno will make maps of the gravity, atmospheric composition, and magnetic field of Jupiter, as well as image the aurora and determine the plasma processes responsible for the aurora. First-time images of the polar region of Jupiter will be captured, and the new technique of passive microwave sounding will be used to study the deep atmospheric regions of Jupiter Ultimately, Juno will provide [...]

IMAGE The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) was the first satellite with the primary mission of imaging the Earth's inner magnetosphere. IMAGE used an array of remote sensing instruments to "see the invisible". IMAGE was launched in 2000 and operated until 2005. IMAGE carried three Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) imagers to observe a large range of energies of ENAs along with UV imagers and a radar instrument. IMAGE provided valuable global images of the Earth's magnetosphere that led to important insights into the interactions between the solar wind, ions in the magnetosphere, and neutral atoms from the Earth's atmosphere. [...]

The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission is designed to explore the nature of the interactions between the solar wind and the interstellar medium at the edge of our solar system. IBEX carries two energetic neutral atom (ENA) imagers that observes ENAs created at the edge of the heliosphere flowing umimpeded towards the inner solar system. The IBEX mission has made the first all-sky maps of the boundary between our solar system and local interstellar medium, resulting in new discoveries of plasma interactions and insight into the local interstellar magnetic field. IBEX has also been utilized to study ENAs produced by interactions in the [...]

GREECE, the Ground-to-Rocket Electrodynamics-Electrons Correlative Experiment, is a NASA sounding rocket campaign designed to study the electromagnetic processes behind dynamic auroral displays. The goal of the GREECE mission was to make high resolution rocket and ground-based investigations of small-scale auroral structure and dynamics. The aurora is one of the most dramatic open-air manifestations of electrodynamics on Earth. The auroral light, produced by energetic electrons incident on the atmosphere, represents the end product of complex electromagnetic processes which occur further out along the Earth's magnetic field. The scientific instruments on-board the sounding rocket were designed and fabricated by SwRI and the [...]

CubeSats SwRI is involved in a number of NASA CubeSats with the goal of providing low-cost platforms for space-based experiments. CubeSats are small, modular satellites, typically with only one or two scientific instruments, that piggy-back on larger satellite launches. CERES The Compact Radiation BElt Explorer (CeREs) is a 3U CubeSat that is part of NASA's Low-Cost Access to Space program. CeREs will primarily be focusing on radiation belt electrons, studying the energization and loss processes of these electrons, low-energy seed populations for the radiation belts, and microbursts. A secondary science goal for CeREs is the [...]

CASSINI The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft became the first satellite to enter Saturn's orbit and has changed our understanding of magnetospheric dynamics in large rotating planets and discovered wonders like the geologically active satellite Enceladus, which ejects water/ice through vents under its surface. The Cassini mission to Saturn has been actively collecting data since 2004 and still continues to make new discoveries. Cassini will soon be approaching a polar orbit similar to Juno's around Jupiter, which will provide an unsurpassed comparative study of the two largest planets in our solar system. SwRI has been heavily involved in the study of plasma and neutral [...]

BepiColombo BepiColombo is the first European Space Agency (ESA) mission to Mercury. This mission is a joint venture between the ESA and the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), with contributions from US institutions through NASA. The spacecraft consists of two orbiters, the Mercury Planetary Orbiter and the Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter, that will study different regions of the Hermean magnetosphere and upper atmosphere simultaneously. The main goal of BepiColombo is to advance our understanding of the composition, geophysics, atmosphere, magnetosphere and history of Mercury, home to one of the solar system's smallest but highly dynamic magnetospheres. The BepiColombo mission is slated to launch [...]