Probabilities of magnetic reconnection encounter at different activity levels in the Earth’s magnetotail

With the upcoming Magnetospheric Multiscale mission by NASA to investigate magnetic reconnection (MR) in detail, it is imperative to identify more precisely the occurrence probabilities of observing MR signatures in different magnetospheric activity levels. An extensive investigation is conducted on the probabilities of observing MR feature at different magnetospheric activity levels with data from Geotail satellite. A newly developed method is used to categorize the state of magnetosphere in five different activity levels. The result shows quantitatively the probabilities in encountering MR features for these five different activity levels, providing valuable guidance to satellite operations to enhance encounter of MR in the Earth’s magnetotail.