While at Goddard, one of the missions I worked on was the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission - the fourth NASA Solar Terrestrial Probe. The point of this mission was to use the Earth’s magnetosphere as a laboratory to study the microphysics of magnetic reconnection, which is an explosive realignment of magnetic fields thought to be a common process at the boundaries of Earth’s magnetic bubble. Magnetic reconnection connects Earth’s magnetic field to the interplanetary magnetic field carried by the solar wind or coronal mass ejections and powers the green-blue auroras shimmering in the night skies. MMS has now been operational for a year and a half (it launched March 12, 2015) and has already delivered promising initial data! Check out the latest updates on the mission's homepage.