| NSF Org: |
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences |
| Recipient: |
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| Initial Amendment Date: | April 6, 2015 |
| Latest Amendment Date: | August 15, 2018 |
| Award Number: | 1429512 |
| Award Instrument: | Continuing Grant |
| Program Manager: |
Ilia Roussev
AGS Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences GEO Directorate for Geosciences |
| Start Date: | July 1, 2015 |
| End Date: | June 30, 2020 (Estimated) |
| Total Intended Award Amount: | $1,497,250.00 |
| Total Awarded Amount to Date: | $1,497,250.00 |
| Funds Obligated to Date: |
FY 2016 = $375,090.00 FY 2017 = $584,097.00 FY 2018 = $217,048.00 |
| History of Investigator: |
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| Recipient Sponsored Research Office: |
2221 UNIVERSITY AVE SE STE 100 MINNEAPOLIS MN US 55414-3074 (612)624-5599 |
| Sponsor Congressional District: |
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| Primary Place of Performance: |
MN US 55455-2070 |
| 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): | Space Weather Research |
| Primary Program Source: |
01001617DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001718DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT 01001819DB 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
Space scientists are becoming ever more valuable to our society as we rely more heavily upon technical systems sensitive to conditions in the space environment, such as global positioning systems and high-speed communications networks. Communications, navigation, and energy production and distribution are significantly affected by Space Weather, and the climatology of the near-Earth space environment. The ability to forecast disturbances which may impact these technologies hinges upon detailed knowledge and understanding of the connected Sun-Earth system, comprising the disciplines of solar physics, heliospheric physics, magnetospheric physics and aeronomy. This project is funded under the Faculty Development in Space Sciences program, the aim of which is to ensure the health and vitality of solar and space physics on university teaching faculties. Through the creation of new tenure-track faculty positions within the intellectual disciplines that comprise the space sciences, research topics in solar and space physics will be integrated into basic physics, astronomy, electrical engineering, geoscience, meteorology, computer science, and applied mathematics programs, and lead to the development of space physics graduate programs capable of training the next generation of leaders in this field.
This project will support a new tenure-track faculty position in the School of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Minnesota, with the purpose of expanding the breadth and depth of the research and teaching expertise within the Space Physics group. Building on a long history of innovation and excellence in space physics research and education, the new hire targets an experimental space scientist to continue and further strengthen the group?s unique and highly successful national standing in this area. Synergies enabled by the opening of a new Physics and Nanotechnology building, the expertise of the space physics technical staff in design and building of space-based instrumentation, and an experienced machine shop provide a distinct advantage to the new faculty member in taking on a leadership role in new programs involving spacecraft, CubeSats, suborbital rockets, or balloons. The addition of a new junior faculty member in space sciences will allow for more regular offerings of space physics courses and the development of one or more new classes, designed to meet the needs of space physics and astrophysics graduate students, physics majors, astrophysics majors and aerospace engineering students. In addition to enhancing the training of young researchers entering the field at this institution, this will also greatly aid the successful, high quality recruitment of the same. The additional hire will further strengthen and grow existing partnerships with several departments and institutes and will also be encouraged to pursue new partnerships broadly with the space sciences community. The School of Physics and Astronomy has a long history of successful outreach programs, designed to interest and excite children (and educators) about physics, to educate the public about interesting research or directly involve them in research, and to involve high school teachers and undergraduates in research. All faculty members are expected to participate and contribute to these programs and the new faculty member will also be encouraged to develop new activities for relevant programs. Funds are included in the budget for this. Utilizing several established and successful departmental and institution wide programs the project will work to ensure a strong focus on increasing diversity in the recruiting both of students into the program and of the new faculty member.
PUBLICATIONS PRODUCED AS A RESULT OF THIS RESEARCH
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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 grant was to hire and support a new space physics faculty member in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota (UMN), including startup funds and salary.
This grant resulted in the establishment of the solar astrophysics group as part of the Space Physics Group at UMN, led by Assistant Professor Lindsay Glesener, who was hired due to this award. The grant provided most of the financial support for Prof. Glesener during the formation and development of the group, and culminated in her applying for tenure at the end of the grant (decision expected in Spring 2021). The grant supported two graduate students (one of whom received her Ph.D. in 2019), two postdoctoral researchers, and several undergrads. This led to 26 peer-reviewed publications, with the first author of 7 of them being Prof. Glesener or her postdocs/students. In addition, approximately 42 conference presentations at major national conferences were given by the solar group, with 3 of these presented by undergraduate students.
Major results funded by this work include the investigation of small microflares on the Sun, which can only be studied by using the relatively new technological capability of focusing high-energy X-ray instruments. These small flares can reveal the secrets of coronal heating and flare particle acceleration. Glesener et al. (The Astrophysical Journal, 2020) reported the first nonthermal solar microflare observed by such a direct focusing telescope, finding that particle acceleration characteristics scale down to small flares. At the same time, accelerated particle distributions were observed to extend down to quite low energies, which means that they contain a large amount of energy. Several other papers supported by this grant used the NuSTAR and FOXSI telescopes to catalog and investigate properties of small flares in comparison to larger ones, effectively establishing a new specialty in flare science.
The group also leveraged the large solar flare databases accumulated by the RHESSI and Fermi hard X-ray instruments. Knuth & Glesener (The Astrophysical Journal, 2020) performed the most detailed study to date of acceleration timescales evident in X-ray time variations. Musset et al. (The Astrophysical Journal, 2020) studied energetic properties of solar jets, which are quick plasma ejections from the Sun that can enter interplanetary space.
The grant also supported new instrumentation. The third flight of the Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager (FOXSI-3) rocket payload was proposed, developed, and successfully flown during the period of performance of this grant. While FOXSI-3 was funded by NASA, this faculty development grant enabled the hire of additional postdocs and students to participate in this and other projects, widening the range of early-career scientists who were able to learn from NASA instrument development. Sounding rocket payloads are important paths to instrumentation careers for early-career scientists, making this an unparalleled opportunity. FOXSI-3 was successfully flown on September 7, 2018 and debuted new collimators for reducing instrumental background and the first-ever photon counting soft X-ray telescope for the Sun.
The solar group at UMN is a new center for high-energy solar astrophysics in the U.S. and has established synergies within the solar astrophysics community, the high-energy astrophysics community, and other relevant groups at UMN. The faculty development grant supported the establishment of collaborations with space physicists at UMN, including co-investigators of the Parker Solar Probe / FIELDS instrument, as well as with astrophysicists in the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics (MIfA). In addition, this grant led to a strong and expansive collaboration between the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Aerospace Engineering at UMN in the establishment of a Small Satellite Research Laboratory (SSRL). The SSRL, which is co-led by Prof. Glesener and Prof. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher of the Aerospace Engineering department, includes approximately 30 undergraduates every semester from across the College of Science and Engineering. These students develop, plan, and build small satellites for astrophysics and engineering purposes. This collaboration led to the deployment of UMN?s first small satellite in February 2020 and led to the procurement of several outside grants (from the NSF, NASA, and the Air Force) for student-led small satellite projects.
Last Modified: 11/30/2020
Modified by: Lindsay Glesener
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