Near Earth space

Northern lights, shocks in plasma, magnetic reconnection, the coupling of the solar wind, magnetosphere and ionosphere are some of the processes we study in the near-Earth space.

Solar wind and Earth magnetosphere — Copyright: ESA

Near-Earth space allows the measurements of plasma physical processes with the plasma instrumentation of the highest possible resolution. It is much more expensive to send payload to other regions of solar system and it is much less data that one can get back from those distant regions. Our research projects deal with such topics as electron acceleration at Earth bow shock , magnetosheath jet formation there, waves in solar wind and many others.

Currently our main sources of data for our studies are the NASA MMS and ESA Cluster missions, both consisting of four identical satellites orbiting the Earth in formations. We participate actively in the data analysis as well as in the operations planning. Auroral processes are studied using data from low Earth orbit satellites, radars and sounding rockets.