Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP)

Volcanic ash may have a bigger impact on the climate than we thought

Anonymous — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 18:04:22 +0000

Volcanic ash may have a bigger impact on the climate than we thought Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/16/2020 - 12:04

Daniel Strain

Volcanic ash shuts down air traffic and can sicken people. But a new study suggests it may also be more important for Earth's climate than once thought.

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CU Boulder professor to speak on mission to ‘touch’ the sun

Anonymous — Tue, 15 Sep 2020 19:34:38 +0000

CU Boulder professor to speak on mission to ‘touch’ the sun Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/15/2020 - 13:34

Alaynah Penalosa

CU on the Weekend Lecture on Sept. 19 to cover NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and CU Boulder’s contribution to the FIELDS Instrument

Approaching the sun closer than any spacecraft has before, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission aims to answer fundamental questions about the solar wind.

Playing a role in the success of that mission is Assistant Professor David Malaspina who worked with the �鶹��Ƶ’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, who helped make a signal processing board for the Parker Solar Probe’s FIELDS Instrument, which measures electric and magnetic fields near the Sun and is one of the four instruments that are part of the mission.

At the top of the page: The Parker Solar Probe, launching this summer, will collect data from the sun's corona. Its mission will bring the spacecraft closer to the sun than any manmade object in history and the data will help predict the impacts of solar weather. Image courtesy of NASA. Above: David Mapaspina

CU on the Weekend

A virtual Zoom webinar

A Mission to Touch the Sun

September 19, 2020

1-2:30PM

Malaspina will discuss the Parker Solar Probe mission, the solar wind—a continuous stream of charged particles that flows from the surface of the sun through the solar system—and the university’s contribution to the spacecraft’s FIELDS instrument on Sept. 19, from 1-2:30 p.m. in a virtual Zoom webinar, titled A Mission to Touch the Sun, as part of the CU on the Weekend lecture series. Registration for the virtual lecture is required.

The CU on the Weekend lecture series is coordinated by the Office for Outreach and Engagement.

"It's exciting,” said Malaspina. “It has more of a climax to it than missions where you answer the science question immediately after making one observation. With this mission, you have to survive the whole time to get closer and closer to the sun."

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission is providing more insight into current theories about how the sun generates solar wind. With its ability to withstand the high temperatures close to the Sun, the spacecraft will do this by recording in situ measurements—data collected in the field.

These data allow scientists to further understand space weather, the interactions that occur between earth and the sun’s particles and magnetic fields and Earth’s magnetic field. Space weather drives phenomena such as the aurora, the amount of radiation that aircraft, spacecraft and astronauts encounter, and disruptions to power lines and oil pipelines.

To approach within 3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface on its final orbits, the spacecraft’s carbon-foam heat shield will help the Parker Solar Probe resist temperatures as high as 2500 Fahrenheit (about 1377 Celsius). The spacecraft will travel at speeds no other spacecraft has achieved, reaching nearly 180 kilometers per second as it closes in on the sun.

CU Boulder created a signal processing board for the FIELDS instrument, which processes, compresses and sends electric and magnetic field data back to Earth.

After completing five orbits—out of 24 allotted—around the sun, Malaspina explains that the data are already revealing much about the sun, with both previously anticipated and entirely surprising results. Thus far, over 100 scholarly articles have been published about recent findings.

"These first orbits were the furthest out, where all the effects that we want to see, the differences between the theories and observations are the weakest, so every time we get closer, we see more and more deviation from what we expected to see, and we're going to get into the regions where we can answer those fundamental open questions," said Malaspina.

The Parker Solar Probe concept was first proposed in 1958, but the mission’s execution was continually postponed due to cost and lack of technology. The mission finally launched in August 2018.

At the same time, the European Space agency launched the Solar Orbiter spacecraft in February, 2020. This mission will enable high-resolution images of the sun’s polar regions. The National Science Foundation also built Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, Hawaii, to provide a view of the sun’s atmosphere from Earth with unprecedented clarity.

Malaspina explains that the space environment is as much a part of our environment as everything that surrounds us in our day to day lives on Earth. Studying the space environment is a way to understand what’s out there and how we fit in this environment, he says.

“It's where we live. The Earth exists in space. Solar activity impacts what happens on Earth, it affects the environment around us," said Malaspina. “To me, it's a fundamental calling to understand the environment in which we live.”

CU on the Weekend Lecture on Sept. 19 to cover NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and CU Boulder’s contribution to the FIELDS Instrument

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A new look at Mars’ eerie, ultraviolet nighttime glow

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Aug 2020 17:27:46 +0000

A new look at Mars’ eerie, ultraviolet nighttime glow Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 08/10/2020 - 11:27

Vast areas of the Martian night sky pulse in ultraviolet light, according to images from NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft

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Emirates Mars Mission to begin journey to the red planet

Anonymous — Tue, 28 Jul 2020 17:10:50 +0000

Emirates Mars Mission to begin journey to the red planet Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 07/28/2020 - 11:10

This month, researchers from Boulder and beyond will watch live as a slice of space exploration history launches from a pad on the Japanese island of Tanegashima.

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Microbes living in a toxic volcanic lake could hold clues to life on Mars

Anonymous — Wed, 02 May 2018 15:05:33 +0000

Microbes living in a toxic volcanic lake could hold clues to life on Mars Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/02/2018 - 09:05

Researchers have discovered a single species of bacteria living in a volcanic lake that may rank as one of the harshest environments on Earth

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How a student satellite solved a major space mystery

Anonymous — Thu, 28 Dec 2017 17:01:13 +0000

How a student satellite solved a major space mystery Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/28/2017 - 10:01

A 60-year-old mystery regarding the source of energetic and potentially damaging particles in Earth's radiation belts is now solved, thanks to a satellite built and operated by students.

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Grand Challenge expands portfolio with three new projects

Anonymous — Wed, 20 Sep 2017 16:55:33 +0000

Grand Challenge expands portfolio with three new projects Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 09/20/2017 - 10:55

The cross-campus Grand Challenge initiative this week announced the selection of three new additions to the Grand Challenge portfolio starting this fall.

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Underrepresented students excel through SMART

Anonymous — Wed, 09 Aug 2017 21:26:04 +0000

Underrepresented students excel through SMART Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 08/09/2017 - 15:26

Cay Leytham-Powell

CU Boulder’s SMART program helps underserved and underrepresented students in the STEM fields gain valuable research experience for graduate school.

What do parasites, broadband-internet cables, hydrogels and ultra-fast lasers have in common?

Rather than forming the basis of a crazy science experiment, these are all research topics showcased at this year's SMART (Summer Multicultural Access to Research Training) program symposium, which is scheduled for Thursday.

SMART is a summer-long initiative that provides students the opportunity to gain research experience across the science, technology, engineering and math (also called STEM) disciplines.

SMART students attend weekly Friday workshops where they learn various skills, including how to make a poster for their findings. Photo by Cay Leytham-Powell.

Over the years, the program has helped roughly 700 underserved and underrepresented college students finish their undergraduate education and continue onto graduate school. Some of these students are now faculty sending their own students across the country to engage with the �鶹��Ƶ’s world-class labs.

And the program, which is finishing its 28th year at CU Boulder, is only just getting started.

This year's class of 19 students represent schools ranging from California to Puerto Rico, and New Hampshire to New Mexico. They span the country—each arriving with big dreams and returning home with something even bigger: an educational focus and a mentor-relationship that helps propel their careers.

"In the sciences, in order to get into graduate school, having authentic research experience is critical," said Kristin Lopez, a SMART program administrator. "Part of what this program is trying to do is level the playing field and allow those research opportunities for students who may not have been able to get them for financial and other reasons."

"It opens a lot of doors," echoed Juan Pablo Gevaudan, a PhD student in civil, environmental and architectural engineering and one of the lead graduate advisors for the SMART program, "especially if a lot of doors were not originally open for you in the beginning."

Providing pathways to higher education is a fundamental value of SMART, which is part of both the Colorado Diversity Initiative and the broader Leadership Alliance, a consortium of 35 leading teaching and research institutions including many Ivy League and minority-serving colleges and universities, which mentor, train and introduce those with diverse backgrounds to the world of higher education.

"We view ourselves as part of a national effort," commented Barbara Kraus, an administrator of the SMART program. "It's not just about, 'We're going to get the students here,' 'We're going to recruit them to graduate school here.' It’s all part of the national effort."

Barbara Kraus is one of the SMART administrators, and ensures that student's experience is a great one. Photo by Cay Leytham-Powell.

Initially, SMART appears like any other undergraduate-research program in that qualified students are paired with faculty mentors, so that students then spend their summer conducting their own self-directed experiments and presenting their results when the program is over.

But that's where similarities end.

Over the course of 10 weeks, SMART takes in roughly 20 STEM students from around the country, places them in prominent CU Boulder laboratories, and provides them the necessary training, skills and experience to pursue graduate study.

They attend weekly workshops on everything from communicating their findings to taking the GRE, as well as designing, implementing and analyzing an experiment under the careful guidance of graduate students, lab postdocs and CU Boulder professors.

At the conclusion of the program, students present their findings orally at the Leadership Alliance National Symposium, and with a poster presentation at the annual SMART symposium.

"It's a powerful experience for them," said Kraus. "We've gotten to know faculty or program directors at other institutions, and they're always sending us students because they know that we'll take care of them."

In addition to providing that national conference experience, SMART is unique in a variety of fundamental ways, with one of the most important being the role of the graduate student mentors who spend their summer with the students, providing them guidance with everything they might need along the way.

One of the factors that sets SMART apart from other similar programs is the role that mentors play in the SMART student's experience. Photo by Cay Leytham-Powell.

This all results in something that brings students back year after year: community.

"I like that there's a sense of community. There's mentors. There's people you can go to apart from just the people you do research with. In that sense, it makes this program unique and I’ve enjoyed that aspect," said Daniel Olivares, a 2017 SMART program participant and junior studying biology at Cal State University Monterey Bay.

Another aspect that sets this program apart is that it encourages students to not just work—it wants them to enjoy their time and truly learn what graduate student life is like.

"They really do a good job of balancing academia and training you, and challenging you, along with having fun and enjoying Colorado," commented Jonathan Nesper, a junior in physics from the University of Central Florida and one of this year's participants. "This is a fun place to come. I think it's one of those things where how much you put into it is how much you get out. I've had a great experience."

This sentiment is echoed among this year's participants, with most feeling prepared to go back to their home institutions and apply what they've learned this summer to their future endeavors.

"My experience has been extraordinary. I feel like I’ve gotten to stretch my skills better and I’ve gotten to know myself as a scientist better—where my weaknesses are and where I can improve and definitely improve my chances of getting into graduate school, improve my chances as a candidate," said Gloire Rubambiza, a 2017 SMART participant and senior in computer science from Grand Valley University. "It's been amazing just being a part of the program."

SMART's 2017 Student Symposium is Thursday, Aug. 10, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. in JILA X325 and X317, 440 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309.

CU Boulder program helps underserved and underrepresented students in the STEM fields gain valuable research experience for graduate school.

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CU-Boulder faculty, students primed for Juno arrival at Jupiter

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Jun 2016 22:37:17 +0000

CU-Boulder faculty, students primed for Juno arrival at Jupiter Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 06/23/2016 - 16:37

Jim Scott

A group of �鶹��Ƶ faculty and students are anxiously awaiting the arrival of NASA’s Juno spacecraft at Jupiter July 4, a mission expected to reveal the hidden interior of the gas giant as well as keys to how our solar system formed.

Launched in 2011, the spacecraft is slated to orbit Jupiter’s poles 33 times roughly 3,000 miles above its cloud tops to better understand the origin and evolution of the largest planet in the solar system. Scientists hope to determine if Jupiter has a solid core, measure the planet’s magnetic fields, hunt for water vapor and observe the polar auroras.

Three researchers from CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and five students, both undergraduates and graduate students, are part of the Juno mission.

Fran Bagenal

“We are crossing our fingers and toes, hoping all goes well,” said CU-Boulder Professor Fran Bagenal of LASP, who co-chairs the Juno Magnetospheric Working Group for NASA and is coordinating many of the science observations for the mission.

As the bruiser planet of the solar system, Jupiter is 320 times the mass of Earth and holds 70 percent of the mass of all the solar system’s planets. Scientists believe Jupiter may have moved closer to and farther from the sun a few billion years ago and had a significant influence on the solar system.

“Jupiter is the biggest, baddest planet,” said Bagenal. “We think it pushed a lot of planetary material around early in its history, helping to shape the solar system we see today.”

Bagenal is particularly interested in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, the area of space around the planet that is controlled by its magnetic field. She and her collaborators want to better understand the processes that create the aurora activity at the planet’s poles – its northern and southern lights – and assess the roles of the planet’s magnetic field on its surroundings.

“This will be the first time we have ever flown over the poles of Jupiter to look directly down on the aurora,” said Bagenal. “We will be going through regions where charged particles are accelerated, bombarding the atmosphere of Jupiter hard enough to make it glow at the poles.”

One of the biggest questions that remains about Jupiter is how much water there is in its atmosphere, since water was a big player in solar system evolution said Bagenal, also a professor in CU-Boulder’s astrophysical and planetary sciences department.

“Most of us know that water absorbs microwaves, because that’s what happens when you put a cup of tea in your microwave oven,” she said. “We are going to be using a microwave detector to look down at different cloud depths to measure the amounts of water below. It’s a bit like doing a CAT scan.”

In addition to Bagenal, LASP Professor Robert Ergun and Research Associate Robert Wilson are part of the Juno science team. Ergun, an expert on Earth’s magnetosphere and associated polar auroras, will be comparing the physical processes at Jupiter with those on Earth. Wilson is a member of the JADE instrument team that will be using Juno to detecting and analyze the electrons and charged particles that produce Jupiter’s bright auroras.

Data from the Juno mission should also help scientists better understand the hundreds of planetary systems recently discovered around other stars, said Bagenal. A number of giant, gaseous planets known as “hot Jupiters” have been discovered in the past two decades, most so close to their parent stars that their orbital period is just a few days, compared to the roughly 12 years it takes Jupiter to orbit the sun.

Bagenal also has worked on five other NASA planetary missions, including the Galileo mission that reached Jupiter’s orbit in 1995 carrying two LASP instruments. She also is the Particle and Plasma Team leader for the New Horizons mission that whipped by Pluto last summer and is now heading into an icy region called the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune’s orbit.

As part of the CU-Boulder Juno effort, Bagenal will be working with CU-Boulder summer school undergraduate student Lucy Todd to build a radio telescope on campus in hopes of detecting radio emissions from Jupiter. Other CU-Boulder Juno participants include undergraduate Kaleb Bodisch, 2015 graduate Logan Dougherty, now a researcher, and graduate students Drake Ranquist and Edward Nerney.

Ranquist, a doctoral student in astrophysics, has been involved in the planning stages of the Juno mission for the past three years, using computer models to help predict which of Jupiter’s magnetic field lines the spacecraft will cross during every part of the mission.

“Predicting the location of Jupiter’s aurora is helping the instrument teams prepare for the upcoming observations,” said Ranquist. “The ability to be involved with the different space missions that LASP is participating in, like Juno, was one of the key factors in deciding to work on my doctorate here.”

CU-Boulder is the only university in the world to have designed and built space instruments that have visited every planet in the solar system, including the dwarf planet Pluto.

While Juno is about the size of a Volkswagen and is encased in a protective radiation vault, its three solar panels make the spinning spacecraft more than 65 feet in diameter. The Juno principal investigator is Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

The Juno spacecraft is carrying 11 experiments and includes a camera to provide images of the colorful Jovian cloud tops. The mission is being managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company of Littleton, Colorado, built the spacecraft. Denver-based United Launch Alliance built the Atlas V rocket that launched Juno in 2011.

Jim Scott is senior science editor for the CU Office of News Services.

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