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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, September 30, 2013 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

photo of Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore

"MMS and the Magnetic Musculature of Space"

ABSTRACT -- Magnetic reconnection is the act of connecting magnetic fields back together. Or in the opposite sense, we may speak of reconnection as the act of disconnecting magnetic fields from each other. For either to occur, there must be a conducting liquid, gas, or plasma that carries electric current, which changes the shape of magnetic fields. The analogy with tendons and muscles is excellent, since both muscles and magnetic fields store and release energy by exerting tension and pressure forces on that to which they are connected. Reconnection is a change in the magnetic musculature of space. The Magnetospheric Multiscale mission is designed to finally resolve the fine scale features of the plasmas that carry the currents and modify the magnetic fields, disconnecting and reconnecting the muscles of space that transmit, store and release energy from the sun to create geospace weather. To mix metaphors shamelessly, the four MMS spacecraft are sensors that will be released into regions that generate intense Twister-like vortex motions known as magnetic flux ropes.

SPEAKER -- Dr. Thomas E. Moore is Senior Project Scientist for MMS, in the Heliophysics ScienceDivision at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He earned a Ph.D. in Astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1978 and did postdoctoral work at theUniversity of NH, before joining NASA at the Marshall Space Flight Center in 1983.

His research interests span the origin, evolution, and fate of our solar system, with a focus on the observed interplay between the atmospheres of the sun, planets, and the interstellar medium. He was principal investigator for the Thermal Ion Dynamics Experiment on the NASA Polar Mission, and lead investigator for the Low Energy Neutral Atom imager on the IMAGE Mission, for which he was also the Mission Scientist. He was the Study Scientist for the Magnetospheric Constellation mission, has authored or co-authored over 250 research publications, and has served as an associate editor for the American Geophysical Union.

He has served on numerous definition teams, review panels and strategic studies, including the Solar Probe Science and Technology Definition Team, the Sun Earth Connection Advisory Subcommittee (SECAS), and the Sun-Earth Connections Roadmap Team (1997, 2000). He co-chaired the first Heliophysics Roadmap Team in 2005-2006. He has been active in the American Geophysical Union as an AwardsCommittee member, as a Chapman Conference Convener, as a Program Secretary for Space Physics and Aeronomy, and was elected a Fellow of the AGU in 2009.

He has received NASA awards for Excellence in Research and Technology, for membership in the Polar and IMAGE development teams, for Outstanding Management of theInterplanetary Physics Branch at NASA Goddard, and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.




Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov