| NSF Org: |
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | September 3, 2013 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 5, 2014 |
| Award Number: | 1331156 |
| Award Instrument: | Fellowship Award |
| Program Manager: |
Therese Moretto Jorgensen
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | January 1, 2014 |
| End Date: | December 31, 2015 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $86,000.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $172,000.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2014 = $86,000.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
Durham NH US 03824-2600 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
Stanford CA US 94305-4035 |
| Primary Place of
Performance Congressional District: |
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| Unique Entity Identifier (UEI): |
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| Parent UEI: |
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| NSF Program(s): | Postdoctoral Fellowships |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001415DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT |
| Program Reference Code(s): |
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| Program Element Code(s): |
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| Award Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Fund Agency Code: | 4900 |
| Assistance Listing Number(s): | 47.050 |
ABSTRACT
Microbursts are electron precipitation from the radiation belts that occur in short bursts (~100ms). Although the particle loss from each burst is very small, they occur in sufficiently large numbers that the total loss from the radiation belts may be significant. This is an Atmospheric and Geospace Post-doctoral Fellowship to determine the total loss from the radiation belts in the form of microbursts. The study will use observations from the forthcoming NSF funded FIREBIRD CubeSats, the Van Allen Probes mission and the BARREL balloon array. The FIREBIRD satellites will provide observations of precipitation at two low altitude locations and the BARREL balloon array will provide multiple nearly stationary observations near the Earth. The Van Allen Probes will provide radiation belt observations for context. At each position there will be multiple simultaneous observations. They will determine the size and frequency of microbursts.
This award will provide early career training for a young researcher at Stanford. This project will support his career ambition to be an instrumentalist. If microbursts turn out to be an important loss mechanism for the radiation belts this research will have impact on space weather research.
PROJECT OUTCOMES REPORT
Disclaimer
This Project Outcomes Report for the General Public is displayed verbatim as submitted by the Principal Investigator (PI) for this award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this Report are those of the PI and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation; NSF has not approved or endorsed its content.
The purpose of this project was to assess the global scale of microburst precipitation and it's impact on the dynamics of the radiation belts as part of a postdoctoral research fellowship. Microbursts are a particular process by which electrons from the Earth's Radiation belts are lost to the atmosphere. This project was to be accomplished utilizing data from the recently launched FIREBIRD CubeSats. These "CubeSats" are small (4"x4"x6") satellites which measure the energetic particles directly at a variety of separations.
This project involved utilizing data from both the orginal set of FIREBIRD CubeSats (FIREBIRD-I) launched in December 2013, as well the FIREBIRD-II mission launched in January 2015 and still operational today. For this, I did both additional calibration of the instruments, as well as running the science operations to select the highest value science data for downlinking and further analysis. This is important because FIREBIRD generates some of the highest time resolution (12.5ms) data taken in orbit of these phenomena, but at the cost of having very limited times of full data availability.
From these measurements, we observed microbursts simultaneously on two spacecraft separated by 10km at the satellite locations which likely corresponds to separations of ~120 km in the source region. Constraining the size of the source region is important for understanding both the causal mechanisms at play (what creates the bursts?) as well as characterizing the size of these events? Understanding the size of these events is important in turn for assessing just how significant they are for the dyanamics of the radiation belts as a whole.
In addition to these measurements from the two FIREBIRD-II CubeSats, we also combined measurements from FIREBIRD with other instruments such as the BARREL balloon array, and the particle and wave instruments on Van Allen Probes. The purpose of this was to compare some of the effects over much larger scales, and better constrain our models of the processes at work.
Understanding radiation belt dynamics has an impact on our ability to protect our national space-based infrastructure. By being able to predict and understand the dynamics of the radiation belts it is possible both to make programmatic decisions to safeguard satellites as well as more reliably and cost-effectively develop the necessary shielding.
Furthermore, a direct result of this project was supporting a postdoctoral research fellow and mentoring opportunities for students in designing, building and opperating spacecraft instrumentation and data processing. This is of direct benefit for creating a stronger and better educated workforce.
Last Modified: 03/31/2016
Modified by: Alexander B Crew
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