Magnetospheric dynamics: The pros and cons of making in-situ measurements

The past decade has brought the solar and magnetospheric physics communities together through the understanding that the dynamics of the connected Sun-Earth system needs to be treated as a whole. Superficially, dynamic processes on the solar surface resemble those in the Earth's magnetosphere, and in both cases it is generally believed that magnetic reconnection is a key element of the dynamic processes. Furthermore, both solar and magnetospheric dynamics have proved to be complex and difficult to observe, which has emphasized the role of numerical simulations as an additional tool for analysis of the observational results. This paper highlights some of the recent advances in combining observational and numerical results to understand magnetospheric processes. As these deal with very basic properties of low-beta plasmas such as applicability of MHD theory, microphysics of reconnection, thin current sheet dynamics, or spatial structuring of large-scale flows, these results may also have their analogs in the solar dynamics.