In our study, we looked at the boundary between the Earth's magnetic field and the interplanetary magnetic field emitted by the Sun, called the magnetopause. While other studies focus on the magnetopause motion near Earth's equator, we have studied it in polar regions. The motion of the magnetopause is faster towards the Earth than towards the Sun. We also found that the occurrence of unusual magnetopause locations is due to similar solar influences in the equatorial and in the polar regions.

Collisional fragmentation of asteroids, comets and meteoroids is the main source of dust in the solar system. The dust distribution is however uncharted and the role of dust in the solar system is largely unknown. At present, the interplanetary medium is explored by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. We present a novel method, based on artificial intelligence, that can be used for detecting dust impacts in Solar Orbiter observations with high accuracy, advancing the study of dust in the solar system.

In collisionless systems like space plasma, particle velocity distributions contain fingerprints of ongoing physical processes. However, it is challenging to decode this information from observations. We used hybrid-Vlasov simulations to obtain ion velocity distribution functions at different locations and at different stages of the Earth's magnetosphere dynamics. The obtained distributions provide valuable examples that may be directly compared with observations by satellites in space.

In this paper we have used Cluster EDI data in combination with the CODIF cusp dataset from Slapak et al. (2017) to obtain parallel and convection velocities for oxygen ions; 69 % of total oxygen outflow from the high-altitude cusps escapes the magnetosphere on average; 50 % escapes tailward beyond the distant X-line. The oxygen capture-versus-escape ratio is highly dependent on geomagnetic conditions. During active conditions, the majority of oxygen outflow is convected to the plasma sheet.

Magnetopause reconnection is a process whereby the Sun explosively transfers energy to the Earth. Whether the process is spatially patchy or spatially continuous and extended has been under long debate. We use space–ground coordination to overcome the limitations of previous studies and reliably interpret spatial extent. Our result strongly indicates that both patchy and extended reconnection is possible and, interestingly, that extended reconnection grows from a localized patch via spreading.