The mission will provide scientists with data to study turbulence in the solar wind. As the solar wind expands to fill the heliosphere – the outermost atmosphere of the sun, which encompasses much of the solar system – it interacts with the magnetic fields of Earth and the sun, so the mission will study the interaction between these fields as well.
“Studying the interaction between the solar wind and Earth’s magnetic field is important from a basic physics perspective, and it’s also important to understand how energy moves through the system and evolves,” Klein said. “And during periods of heightened solar activity, these processes also affect things like global positioning and communications satellites, other spacecraft and astronauts.”