Themis
THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) answers longstanding fundamental questions concerning the nature of the substorm instabilities that abruptly and explosively release solar wind energy stored within the Earth’s magnetotail. The primary objectives of the mission are to
• Establish when and where substorms begin
• Determine how the individual components of the substorm interact
• Determine how substorms power the aurora, and
• Identify how local current disruption mechanisms couple to the more global substorm phenomena