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A new NSF grant for space research at Augsburg College
September 2005
Minneapolis -- The U. S. National Science Foundation has announced funding
for a new international research effort, involving faculty and students
from Augsburg College, the University of New Hampshire, and the University
of Oslo, Norway, to study some of the fundamental physical processes involving
the aurora borealis, or northern lights. Augsburg will receive $ 301,000
over three years for its efforts in this project.
Norwegian scientists were some of the first to study the aurora, more
than a century ago. (A picture of Kristian Birkeland, a Physics professor
at the University of Oslo, is on the Norwegian 200 Kroner bill.) Auroral
studies are still a major area of research in Norway, now in cooperation
with scientists from several other countries in Europe, the U.S., Russia,
and Japan.
Based on a proposal submitted to NSF in January 2005, Augsburg Professor
of Physics Mark Engebretson, University of New Hampshire Research Professor
of Physics Marc Lessard, and University of Oslo Physics Professor and
Department Chair Joran Moen will collaborate to build, install, and operate
a set of search coil magnetometers at four sites on the Svalbard archipelago,
a set of islands in the Arctic Ocean north of Norway. After these instruments
are installed in late summer 2006, they will operate continuously throughout
the following years to monitor magnetic variations associated with changes
in Earth's space environment, and in particular with the overhead aurora.
Because of the roughly 23 degree tilt between Earth's rotation axis and
its magnetic poles, Svalbard is the only region in the northern hemisphere
where daytime auroras, ordinarily invisible because they are much less
bright than sunlight, can be seen even near noon during the long, dark
Arctic winter. Although magnetic fields are themselves invisible, magnetometers
have the advantage that they can detect changes at high altitudes despite
darkness or cloud cover. As a result, observations from this array of
magnetometers can be used for year-round studies. Together with data from
several other kinds of instruments already in place on Svalbard, including
auroral imaging cameras and specialized high-altitude radars, the magnetometer
data will be used in attempts to better understand the interactions that
create the complex, rapidly changing auroral displays. Increased understanding
of the aurora also holds promise of helping scientists worldwide to better
predict and respond to "space weather," which during major geomagnetic
storms (associated with sunspots and related "weather" on the
sun) threatens navigational and communications systems, and subjects astronauts
and even passengers on high-latitude air flights to greatly enhanced doses
of radiation.
As with other research projects at Augsburg, undergraduate science students
will be an integral part of the research team. Past and present Augsburg
students have had opportunities to learn research skills and understand
the cadence of scientific research, and dozens have been able to present
their findings at scientific conferences or in scientific journals.
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Physics Department receives three grants for
research in space science
June 2004
Augsburg College has received funding from the National Science Foundation
and NASA for three multi-year research projects, each of which will provide
funds for undergraduate research by Augsburg students.
a. The National Science Foundation’s Magnetospheric Physics Program
awarded Augsburg a five-year $ 600,000 grant to continue the Magnetometer
Array for Cusp and Cleft Studies (MACCS) project, which uses an array
of nine ground-based magnetometers located at Inuit villages in Arctic
Canada to study high-latitude ionospheric and magnetospheric processes
governed by the interaction of the solar wind with Earth’s space
environment. MACCS, begun by Augsburg and Boston University in 1991, has
provided undergraduate research opportunities for over a dozen Augsburg
students; many have gone on to earn advanced degrees in physics, astronomy,
or related engineering fields. One of these, 1992 Augsburg graduate and
former student body president David Murr, who received his Ph. D. degree
from Boston University in 2002 for his work on MACCS, received the first
Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by
NSF, and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College. This grant
will support research efforts by Physics Professor Mark Engebretson, Assistant
Scientist Jennifer Posch, and two students, and will also support continued
visits to Augsburg by Dr. Viatcheslav Pilipenko, a theoretical physicist
from Russia. “Slava” Pilipenko is now head of laboratories at
two Moscow institutions, the Institute of the Physics of the Earth and
the prestigious Space Research Institute.
This grant also provides funds to allow data from two of the nine MACCS
stations to be sent in near real time via the Iridium satellite telephone
system to computers in Augsburg College’s Computer Science Department,
from where they will be made available automatically on the worldwide
web for use by other scientists.
b. The National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs awarded
Augsburg a three-year, $ 426,000 grant to continue another ground-based
observational space physics program at Augsburg, involving magnetometers
at South Pole Station, Antarctica, and other sites in Antarctica, Greenland,
and Arctic Canada. Mark Engebretson and nearly 20 Augsburg physics students
have been funded to work with these instruments over the past 21 years.
This new grant also supports Jennifer Posch and a student; a substantial
fraction supports Dr. Marc Lessard of Dartmouth College’s Thayer
School of Engineering and a graduate student there.
3. NASA’s Office of Space Science awarded Princeton University’s
Plasma Physics Laboratory and Augsburg a three-year $ 252,000 grant for
a new project to use observations of magnetic fields and energetic particles
from NASA’s Polar satellite to better characterize the onset of magnetospheric
substorms, which lead to the sudden onset of auroral displays. Physics
Professor Ken Erickson heads up Augsburg’s efforts in this project;
which will also involve an undergraduate student researcher.
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