A NASA mission called Magnetospheric Multiscale, scheduled to be launched Thursday night, aims to make the first detailed measurements of a region of colliding magnetic fields about 38,000 miles above Earth. The magnetic collisions, which can potentially disrupt satellites and power grids, are not well understood.

“The first step is to figure out what the heck is going on,” John Dorelli, a space scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in an interview.

The protective bubble of the Earth’s magnetic field typically deflects high-speed particles from the sun. But an onslaught of particles from a solar explosion can pop the outer layers of the bubble. “Right where the solar wind meets the magnetosphere, that boundary, you have a weak point in the magnetic field,” Dr. Dorelli said.

The details of the popping, known as magnetic reconnection, remain mysterious. (The same process, on a much larger scale, generates the solar explosions known as coronal mass ejections.)