DavidÌýMalaspina

  • Honors Thesis Advising
Address

Main Campus Office: Duane D-315

East Campus Office: SPSC N290E

I study plasma physics of the heliosphere, including the solar wind, planetary magnetospheres, and planetary ionospheres. Topics of particular interest include: high-frequency plasma waves, wave-particle interactions, solar wind dynamics, cosmic dust impacts on spacecraft, and spacecraft charging. To enable these studies and others, I develop scientific instrumentation for spacecraft, focusing on the measurement of electric and magnetic fields as well as on signal processing techniques and hardware.

Current instrumentation projects include the Atmospheric Electrodynamics probe for THERmal plasma (AETHER) instrument on the Geospace Dynamics Constellation, the Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment (LuSEE), and the Rapid Active Plasma Sounder (RAPS) for the COUSIN sounding rocket.Ìý

Completed instrumentation projects include the FIELDS instrument on the Parker Solar Probe mission, the FIELDS instrument on the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission (MMS), and the Electric Fields and Waves (EFW) instrument on the Van Allen Probes mission.


Selected Recent Publications:

David Malaspina, Alexandros Chasapis, Peter Tatum, Chadi Salem, Stuart Bale, John Bonnell, Thierry Dudok de Wit, Keith Goetz, Marc Pulupa, Jasper Halekas, Phyllis Whittlesey, Roberto Livi, Anthony Case, Michael Stevens, and Davin Larson. Inhomogeneous Kinetic Alfven Waves in the Near-Sun Solar Wind. The Astrophysical Journal, August 2022. doi: accepted.

David Malaspina, Robert Ergun, Jerry Goldstein, Constance Spittler, Laila Andersson, Joseph Borovsky, Xiangning Chu, Lauren De Moudt, Dennis Gallagher, Vania Jordanova, Solene Lejosne, Jason Link, Naomi Maruyama, Jerry Parker, Scott Thaller, Bryce Unruh, and Brian Walsh. Plasma Imaging, LOcal Measurement, and Tomographic Experiment (PILOT): A Mission Concept for Transformational Multi-Scale Observations of Mass and Energy Flow Dynamics in Earth's Magnetosphere. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 9:910730, June 2022. doi: 10.3389/fspas.2022.910730.

David M. Malaspina, Guillermo Stenborg, Doug Mehoke, Adel Al- Ghazwi, Mitchell M. Shen, Hsiang-Wen Hsu, Kaushik Iyer, Stuart D. Bale, and Thierry Dudok de Wit. Clouds of Spacecraft Debris Liberated by Hypervelocity Dust Impacts on Parker Solar Probe. The Astrophysical Journal, 925(1):27, January 2022. doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac3bbb.

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