Determining the manner by which plasma is transferred from one bounded region to another, together with the associated system response, has been one of space plasma physics' primary objectives since the birth of the discipline. The Earth’s magnetosphere, in particular, provides an excellent laboratory in which to investigate the these plasma processes and as such we have benefited from a number of space missions examining them both in situ (e.g., ISEE, Interball, Geotail) and remotely (e.g., Polar, IMAGE). It is only recently however, with the successful launch and operation of multi-spacecraft missions (Cluster, Double Star and THEMIS), that we have been able to distinguish between temporal and spatial variations, and to probe small and meso-scale structures, leading to a step change in our understanding of the local plasma processes and the dynamics of boundaries of the magnetosphere.
These recent observations provide glimpses of the micro- and multi-scale processes that will be the focus of future missions like MMS and SCOPE.
This session invites papers examining plasma processes involving multi-spacecraft data combining recent Cluster, Double Star, THEMIS and Geotail data, simulations and also submissions relating to the future direction of space plasma science in the context of these results.