2024 Cooper Lecture: Jim Burch
With New Eyes: A Space Scientist's Odyssey | 2024 Cooper Lecture
Jim Burch, Senior Vice President - Space Sector
Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, TX)
Join us on Wednesday, April 3 in White Hall G09 at 6:00 PM for the 2024 Cooper Lecture presented by Dr. Jim Burch, Senior Vice President - Space Sector at the Southwest Research Institute (San Antonio, TX). His talk is titled With New Eyes: A Space Scientist's Odyssey.
Abstract
Breakthroughs in space science often result from new measurement techniques that allow known phenomena to be seen in new ways. In the quest to understand how the solar wind interacts with the Earth's magnetosphere to produce magnetic storms and the aurora it became known in the 1990s that progress required developing a means of globally imaging charged particle populations and to drastically increase the accuracy and speed with which the particles are measured. While ideally these two improvements would be implemented together, the reality of budgets for large science projects caused them to be achieved 15 years apart. This story begins with the development and flight of the NASA IMAGE mission, which undertook to provide the first global images of the charged particle populations that inhabit the magnetosphere and make it a dynamic and scientifically interesting place. As a large, government-funded research project, IMAGE was an adventurous experience providing new knowledge and understanding about the science and about how the scientific community and the U. S. government work together. The second story is about the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission and how progress in understanding magnetic reconnection (which drives the solar-wind magnetosphere interaction) required major advances in the speed and resolution of charged-particle and electric-measurements. As an even larger project, it provides more challenges and adventures and equally rewarding results. A new stage of developing new eyes for space science is the ultra-high resolution mass spectrometer on the NASA Europa Clipper mission, which will measure complex organic compounds around Jupiter's moon Europa as part of determining the habitability of its internal ocean.
Biography
Jim Burch is Senior Vice President of the Space Sector of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio, Texas. Jim graduated from St. Mary's University in San Antonio in 1964 with a B.S. degree in Physics. He then attended graduated school in the Department of Space Science at Rice University, where he obtained a PhD in 1968. From 1968 to 1971 he served as an officer in the U.S. Army with service in Vietnam and as an instructor in the Physics Department of the U. S. Military Academy. From 1971 to 1977 Jim worked as a space scientist for NASA at the Goddard and Marshall Space Flight Centers. Since that time, he has been at SwRI. Throughout his scientific career, Jim has been an experimental space physicist with the goal of developing new instrumentation and space missions to advance the understanding of the interaction of the solar wind with the magnetospheres of the Earth, planets, and comets and the composition of ionized and neutral gases in the solar system. He has been principal investigator of the NASA IMAGE mission, which was the first to image charged particles in the Earth's magnetosphere. He has also been principal investigator of the ion and electron sensor on the European Space Agency's Rosetta comet orbiter and lander. Currently Jim is Principal Investigator of the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, which is the first to investigate at the electron scale the plasma physics phenomenon known as magnetic reconnection. He is also currently the principal investigator of the MASPEX mass spectrometer instrument on the NASA Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will be launched on October 10, 2024, to the Jupiter moon. With unprecedented mass resolution, MASPEX will investigate the presence of complex molecules, including organics, in the thin atmosphere and in plumes originating from the internal ocean of Europa. Jim's accomplishments have been acknowledged by Fellowship in the American Geophysical Union (AGU), by the AGU Fleming and Bowie Medals, and by the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal.