A new study led by Southwest Research Institute's Dr. Michael Starkey has provided observational evidence from the SwRI-led Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ions (PUIs) and associated wave activity in the near-Earth solar wind environment. The MMS mission, launched by NASA in 2015, placed four spacecraft in orbit to observe Earth's magnetosphere, a magnetic field around the planet that shields it from harmful solar and cosmic radiation.