|
|
What's Hot? Triana IMAGE Cassini ISTP |
|
What's Coming? LWS Geospace STProbes DRACO ST-5/NCT |
|
What's Here? CAPS LENA TIDE Hydra SWE WAVES ISIS Ulysses Voyager |
|
Where Are We? LSSP ESED SED Sun-Earth Connect. GSFC NASA |
|
What's Related? NSSDC CDAWeb Coho Omniweb SpyCAT CCMC |
|
Other Links Sched. Conf. Rms 2001 News 2002 News |
|
December 2001 Polar/IMAGE Study of Auroral Conjugacy featured at Fall AGU Meeting Press Conference Recently, the Polar spacecraft has been taking images of the aurora australis, while the IMAGE spacecraft has been taking images of the aurora borealis. Comparisons of the simultaneous auroras in both hemispheres has allowed scientists to determine that the auroras lie deep inside the magnetosphere and are NOT produced directly by entering particles from the solar wind. November, 2001: A new geospace missions confederation is being formed between Polar, Cluster, IMAGE, SOHO, ACE, Geotail and Wind. A NASA sponsored senior review of operating missions has resulted in the formation of a new confederation of several missions, for coordinated study of the Sun-Earth system and the connections between the sun, interplanetary space, the Earths magnetosphere, ionosphere, and atmosphere. October 2001: Voyager 1 observations of the magnetic field strength are consistent with Parkers model out to 80 AU Continued progress of the Voyager 1 spacecraft toward the fringes of the solar system has allowed it to map the magnetic field of the sun to a distance of 80 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth (7.5 billion miles). 1 September 2001: Walter Allen joins 692 as Howard U. Cooperative Education Student Walter Allen joined the Interplanetary Physics Branch as a graduate level cooperative education Physics student at Howard University, effective in early May this year. He has been working in Rm.118 full time this summer. He was previously a summer student with 692 during 1999, and since then a coop student with code 554, the laser and electronic optics branch. Walters interests are in computational physics, leading him to move to 692 this year. 31 August 2001: First IMAGE-ing of Particle Acceleration by Dynamic Magnetic Fields The HENA instrument on the IMAGE mission has enough sensitivity to energetic neutral atoms to see the plasma sheet out to 12 RE on the nightside, just before a substorm dipolarization occurs. When the impulsive auroral brightening and injection of energetic particles occurs, IMAGE/HENA clearly sees the plasma sheet contract toward the Earth, and brighten in energetic particle flux. This behavior is consistent with the results of modeling the dipolarization of the magnetotail, with attendant induction electric fields, as obtained by Fok et al. in the July 1999 J. of Geophysical Research. 15 June 2001: Magnetospheric Constellation Mission STDT Report Released A report on the Magnetospheric Constellation: Dynamic Response and Coupling Observatory (DRACO) has been in preparation for the past two years, and is now complete and available online. Either hard copy or electronic versions can be requested at the link above. The hard copy version comes with a short introductory movie on CD-ROM, and an animated card that illustrates one possible form of magnetotail dynamics that requires a constellation approach for definitive study. A much more revealing movie of this simulated magnetotail behavior can be downloaded from the report site. MC-DRACO is an approved mission of the Solar Terrestrial Probes Program of the NASA Sun Earth Connections Theme, and has been studied and defined by a NASA-appointed Science and Technology Definition Team, as identified in the report. 14 May 2001: GGS Accomplishments and Future Directions Detailed for NASA Senior Review Dr. Barbara Giles coordinated the development of the GGS proposal to the NASA Senior Review of Sun Earth Connections operating missions, in cooperation with the entire GGS project science staff. The proposal, submitted to NASA headquarters on 14 May, summarizes the many accomplishments to date that have been realized using the new global data sets including the Geotail, Wind, and Polar spacecrafts. These data sets complement the others of the ISTP program, and the efforts of the GGS Theory and Ground-based Investigations. The proposal then outlines the new opportunities that will be afforded by extended mission operations, in part enabled by new orbital configurations, permitting GGS to appear as the right thing, in the right place, at the right time, for studies of the period of decreasing solar activity between now and 2005. 27 March 2001: New Views of Magnetic Fields in the Heliosphere Recent theoretical work using 3D MHD simulations has discovered a new feature of the classical Parker spiral magnetic field in the heliosphere. Owing to secondary plasma flows (non-radial), the boundaries between sectors of toward and away fields (relative to the sun) are linked in these simulations by connecting field lines that deviate from the overall spiral shape. This previously unexpected and unnoticed linkage has been found in data comparisons based on the Helios spacecraft, which traveled as close as 40% (?) of the Earths distance from the sun. In addition to confirming the maturity of the theoretical simulations used in this work, this result has implications for the transport of harmful energetic particles from solar flares to the Earth, during space storm periods. 6 March 2001: Solar Wind Layers Impede Cosmic Ray Access to Solar System Dr. Len Burlaga reports the identification of discrete disturbed regions in the distant solar wind that scatter cosmic rays and impede their access to the inner solar system and the region of the Earth. Variations of cosmic ray flux into our atmosphere are thought to produce variations in the electrical and ice nucleation properties of our atmosphere, possibly affecting our weather. 26 January 2001: IMAGE Mission Featured on Science Cover The Imager for Magnetopause to Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) mission is a cover story in Science magazine. A paper by PI Jim Burch et al. chronicles the pioneering new observations of space weather made by IMAGE. Never before have we been able to see the plasma clouds swirling around the earth as they form and dissipate during geospace storms. This first publication on IMAGE results features images of the cold plasmas in scattered extreme ultraviolet sunlight, and the hot plasmas of the ring current in energetic neutral atom glow, as shown in the linked image. On the left is a blue EUV image showing formation of a spiral plasma tail on the left side of the plasmasphere, around the Earth. The plasmasphere temperature is around 5000°C or 9000°F. On the right is an image of the "ring" of hot plasma just outside the plasmasphere, carrying electrical current around the Earth. The temperature of the ring current is nearly 1 Billion °C or 1.8 Billion °F. Of course, these images don't do justice to the dynamic behavior of these two important plasma regions near the Earth. Please visit the IMAGE site for more information about this exciting mission, and watch for further science articles in a special issue of Geophysical Research Letters (American Geophysical Union). 10 January 2001: The Sudden and Prolonged Depletion of Energetic Electrons in the Outer Zone, May-July 1999. 9 January 2001: Discovery of Solar Wind Low Energy Neutral Atoms by the IMAGE/LENA imager. The signal that is observed by the LENA imager when it looks toward the sun has been conclusively shown to consist mainly of energetic neutral atoms from the solar wind. These atoms are formed when solar wind ions exchange electrons with slow interplanetary atoms, producing a fast atom and a slow ion. They are seen even when the sun is beyond the field of view of the LENA imager, because the solar wind envelops the magnetosphere and exchanges charge with the extended geocorona or exosphere of the Earth. These results are reported in a paper to appear shortly in the Journal of Geophysical Research. 1 January 2001: IMAGE Theory and Modeling Team member Mei-Ching Fok supports energetic neutral atom discoveries. November 2000: Popular Science chooses Cluster Mission among the "Best of Whats New 2000" As Cluster II NASA project scientist, Dr. Melvyn Goldstein recently traveled to New York city to accept an award from the magazine Popular Science on behalf of the Cluster II project, as summarized in a Code 692 Science Nugget. Popular Science has designated Cluster II as one of 100 projects selected as the "Best of Whats New 2000. More information about the Cluster II project can be found here. Commissioning of the four Cluster spacecraft is continuing. Almost all of the instruments have been turned on and have begun to collect data. Very little processed data is yet available. However, some processed data from the Wide Band Data (WBD) instrument run by the Univiversity of Iowa can be viewed at their web site |
|
Last revised: 14 August 2003 |
