Spacecraft missions do not always record observations at the highest possible resolution, and the so-called burst mode is switched on only occasionally. It is of paramount importance that processes of interest are sampled in burst mode. At the moment, many missions rely on a scientist in the loop, who decides when to trigger burst mode by looking at the preview data. Our work constitutes a first step towards making this decision automatic to improve mission operations and decrease human bias.

The Earth's atmosphere is constantly losing molecules and charged particles, amongst them oxygen ions or O⁺. Quantifying this loss provides information about the evolution of the atmosphere on geological timescales. In this study, we investigate the final destination of O⁺ observed with Cluster satellites in a high-altitude magnetospheric region (plasma mantle) by tracing the particles forward in time using simulations. We find that approximately 98 % of O⁺ escapes the Earth's magnetosphere.

The first 10 min interval of Pi2 onset is the most active period of substorms composed of field line deformations associated with an increase in curvature radius of flux tubes and their longitudinal expansion. The flux tube deformations were triggered by the ballooning instability of slow magnetoacoustic waves upon arrival of the dipolarization front from the tail. They preceded the classical dipolarization caused by the reduction of cross-tail currents and resulting pileup of the field lines.

We investigate the magnetopause stability and mixing using a new three-fluid model aimed at reproducing the system configuration obtained directly from satellite data. This realistic model is a basic starting point for numerical simulations; however, the realistic three-fluid equilibrium presented in this paper should allow this work to be taken a step further and could be applied to other experimental cases in the future.