An instrument to be jointly designed and built at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder) and the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) has been selected to fly on NASA’s next mission to study Earth’s upper atmosphere.
The instrument, known as the Atmospheric Electrodynamics probe for THERmal plasma (AETHER), will measure electron density and temperature from a constellation of Earth-orbiting satellites as part of NASA’s Geospace Dynamics Constellation (GDC) mission. These measurements will be vital to GDC’s aim to understand the fundamental processes that govern the dynamic coupling between Earth’s magnetic field and our planet’s upper atmosphere.
Christopher Fowler, a faculty member in the
Department of Physics and Astronomy at West Virginia University, is a co-investigator and member of the AETHER science team and will be
heavily involved in analyzing science data returned by the scientific
instruments on GDC. Fowler’s interests
lie in determining the processes that govern how ionospheric plasma evolves as
it traverses the polar regions of the Earth. In particular, large scale plasma
structures of enhanced electron density that can be up to a few hundred
kilometers in size, can traverse across the polar regions in a sometimes
seemingly chaotic fashion. These originally coherent structures can change
speed and rotate as they travel, and even break up into increasingly smaller
structures that can become just meters in size. The AETHER and GDC measurements
will help us fully understand the processes that drive this behavior and to
understand when and why certain processes play larger roles than others.
“Our team is really excited,” said AETHER Principal Investigator Laila Andersson, a space plasma researcher at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder. “This instrument will be used to support the mission’s overarching goal, which is to study how the upper atmosphere (ionosphere-thermosphere system) responds to energy inputs and drives global redistribution of mass, momentum, and energy.” According to Andersson, GDC will help develop the knowledge and capability to detect and predict extreme conditions in space in order to protect life and society—and to safeguard human and robotic activities at and beyond Earth.
Studying the highly connected Sun-Earth system
As a multi-spacecraft constellation, GDC will provide a platform for the coordinated and simultaneous measurements of both neutral gas and plasma needed to advance scientific understanding of the Earth’s coupled ionosphere-thermosphere system on a global scale. The mission will be a key step towards understanding the basic chemistry and physics of Earth’s upper atmosphere and its interaction with the magnetosphere. The mission will also give scientists new insights into space weather processes.
“The coupled system between the magnetosphere and Earth's upper atmosphere is crucial to predict satellite drag and distortions of signals (such as GPS) through the ionosphere,” said Andersson. “With this mission, we’ll be able to get a better understanding of this system on a global scale.”
The atmosphere is a vital part of the vast and highly connected Sun-Earth system, and the part closest to home, according to LASP Director Dan Baker. “The measurements that AETHER will be making will be key to furthering our scientific understanding and will continue LASP’s long record of observing Earth’s atmosphere,” said Baker, who is a collaborator on the instrument team. “With this work, we expect to have critical ‘dual use’ capability that includes both basic science research and forefront space-weather capabilities,” he added. “We are proud to be selected as participants in this next major NASA heliophysics project.”
Students play a major role in all research activities at LASP, including this mission. “We will have undergraduate and graduate students involved in this project, and through the course of the mission, they will be working on everything from instrument testing and software development to data acquisition and analysis,” said Andersson.
Drawing on heritage
The AETHER team was one of three instrument investigation teams selected by NASA to join GDC’s science team. Five others are still under consideration.
AETHER draws on the heritage from two previous instrument designs: the Langmuir Probe and Waves instrument on the NASA Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission and the FIELDS Instrument Suite on the NASA Parker Solar Probe mission.
In addition to Andersson, the AETHER team will include Deputy Principal Investigator Stuart Bale, a physics professor at the Space Sciences Lab (SSL) at UCB, and Instrument Scientist Bob Ergun. He is a LASP research scientist and professor in the CU Boulder Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS) Department.
“The proposal effort was very impressive,” said Bale. “I think we have a terrific instrument concept and team; this mission is going to be fun!”
Other U.S partners on AETHER include the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). European partners include the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF-U) Sweden, the EISCAT Scientific Association in Sweden, and LESIA-Observatory of Paris, France.
Additional co-investigators include CU/APS Assistant Professor David Malaspina; LASP researchers Naomi Maruyama and Xu Wang; SSL/UCB researchers Trevor Bowen and Marc Pulupa; and Assistant Professor Frederick Wilder from UTA. International collaborators include Anders Eriksson from IRF-U in Sweden; Ingemar Häggström from EISCAT; and Karine Issautier and Arnaud Zaslavsky from LESIA.
Media contacts:
- Laila Andersson, LASP research
scientist and AETHER Principal Investigator, (303) 492-1689 or Laila.Andersson@lasp.colorado.edu
- Daniel Strain, CU Boulder media relations, (303) 535-5875 or Daniel.Strain@colorado.edu
- Holly Legleiter, Public Relations Coordinator, Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, West Virginia University, 304-685-5301, hlegleiter@mail.wvu.edu