Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, April 20, 2009 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
David Sibeck and Frank Snow
"THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms), Goddard's Multi-Satellite Mission to the Magnetosphere"
ABSTRACT -- Geomagnetic substorms, marked by brilliant auroral displays over the polar caps, intense currents pumped into the Earth's ionosphere, and dramatic increases in Van Allen radiation belt particles, result from abrupt releases of solar wind energy previously captured and stored within the Earth's magnetic field. In an effort to distinguish between strikingly different models for substorms and improve predictability of this fundamental mode for solar wind-magnetosphere interaction, NASA selected the THEMIS mission proposed by UC Berkeley for launch as an Explorer mission in February 2007. In this joint presentation, we describe how the scientific objectives of the mission drove its design, the lessons learned during the development phase, and present results from the five identical spacecraft and dedicated array of ground observatories that comprise the THEMIS mission.
SPEAKERS --
Dr. David Sibeck has worked at the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory (1985-2002),
NASA Headquarters (2003-4) and NASA GSFC (2005 -
present). He is the author or co-author of over
200 scientific articles on Sun-Earth Connection
Physics. In addition to being Mission Scientist
for THEMIS, he serves as Mission Scientist for the
LWS Geospace missions. He received the American
Geophysical Union's MacElwane award in 1992 and is
a fellow of that organization. He is an associate
editor for Advances in Space Research, a
corresponding editor for EOS, and Campaign
Coordinator for the National Science Foundation's
Global Interaction campaign.
Frank Snow began his career with the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in 1980 as an attitude analyst. In Flight Dynamics, Frank supported numerous projects including ERBE, SMM, Landsat 4, GRO, and UARS. From 1988 to 1997, Frank led the mission operation teams for Flight Telerobotc Servicer, Space Station, and the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). After the successful launch of ACE in 1997, Frank joined the Explorer Program, where he was the NASA Project Manager for RHESSI (launched February, 2002), GALEX (launched April, 2003) and THEMIS (launched February, 2007). Frank is presently the Instrument System Manager for MAVEN, the first Mars mission managed by GSFC.