Our plasma group at MSSL is currently working on the 2nd step of an ESA F-class mission proposal that we will submit on the 21st of April
The proposal is led by the head of MSSL, Andrew Fazakerley. The mission is called: Magnetotail Dynamics Explorer (MDE), and consists of two identical spacecraft at ~600km, carrying identical payload (plasma electron, mag, probes, antennas and UV camera), aiming to answer the following:
- Why does a magnetospheric substorm start?
- Where and how is the energy released by substorms dissipated (Ohtani 2019; Akasofu+2025)?
- How closed can the magnetosphere become (Milan+2023)?
Some relevant material in the attached
With this email, I would like to ask you to consider supporting the mission
The list of the names and institutes of the supporters will possibly be submitted with the step-2 proposal.
If you wish to be included as a supporter (someone who acknowledges the importance of such a mission and someone who is potentially interested on the science enabled by such a mission), you can put your name in the list (please see the e-mail version of the ATST newsletter for the link).
Could I also ask you to share it within your group and ask other people to sign if they are interested in this science topic?
Georgios Nicolaou (Transmis par Olga Alexandrova)