Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771
ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM
Monday, March 7, 2011 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium
David Sibeck
"The Radiation Belt Storm Probe Mission and the Van Allen Radiation Belts"
ABSTRACT -- Energetic charged particles within the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts pose a hazard to both spacecraft and astronauts. Despite more than 40 years of study, the processes that control radiation levels within the belts remain poorly understood. Recent observations have demonstrated that the belts are far more dynamic than previously believed, sometimes appearing within a matter of minutes and then slowly decaying in place over a period of months. NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probe (RBSP) mission is a fundamental component of its Living With a Star program, whose objectives focus on research projects with societal consequences. The RBSP mission, scheduled for launch in May 2012, will provide the scientific understanding needed to generate both first-principle predictive and empirical models for the radiation belts. The two identical spacecraft, both built and managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (JHU/APL), will carry the comprehensive particle and field instrumentation needed to distinguish between and quantify the various proposed mechanisms for radiation belt and ring current energization and decay during geomagnetic storms driven by variations in the solar wind. This talk focuses on how the scientific objectives of the mission translate into engineering requirements.
SPEAKER -- Dr. David Sibeck has worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (1985-2002), NASA Headquarters (2003-4) and NASA GSFC (2005 - present). His research interests focus on the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth's magnetosphere, a topic on which he has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific articles. In addition to being Project 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 president-elect of the NSF's Geospace Environment Modeling program.