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I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend last week and that you’re looking forward to all things fall.
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As summer draws to a close, the Heliophysics Division has been as busy as ever. Congratulations to the ESCAPADE team, who passed their KDP C on August 17, and to the SunRISE team, who passed their KDP C on September 8. Well done, all!
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Special kudos go to the IMAP Student Collaboration (StC) for passing PDR September 3. IMAP StC is a collaborative hardware program involving graduate and undergraduate students from three universities (University of New Hampshire, Sonoma State and Howard University). Students will design, build, test, and calibrate a 2U CubeSat with student-built instrumentation. The science focus is on the response of Earth’s polar upper atmosphere (the thermosphere in the auroral and cusp regions) to particle precipitation and other conditions associated with solar wind forcing and internal magnetospheric processes. This mission will provide terrific hands-on research experience for students, at least half of whom are women and/or members of underrepresented populations, and will help us to make space science opportunities accessible to all in support of NASA’s IDEA goals.
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While we look forward to these missions launching over the next few years, we also have some science launching in the next few weeks! The Cusp Plasma Imaging Detector (CuPID) CubeSat will hitch a ride to space with NASA & USGS’s Landsat 9 later this month. CuPID will give us a unique perspective on the boundaries of the magnetosphere after launch. Already, it’s provided valuable opportunities for numerous students who have worked on the mission. Read more about the team behind CuPID here. Go Landsat 9 and CuPID!
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Congratulations to the EVE sounding rocket team for a successful flight on Sept. 9 — and welcome to our fall communications intern Anna Blaustein, who hit the ground running with a feature story about EVE! We also can’t wait to see the data from the CLASP-2 sounding rocket launching in less than a month, and several more sounding rockets on deck for this fall and winter.
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On October 2-3, 2021, NASA is inviting coders, entrepreneurs, scientists, designers, storytellers, makers, builders, artists, and technologists to participate in a virtual hackathon—The NASA International Space Apps Challenge. During a period of 48 hours, participants from around the world will create virtual teams and use Earth observation data to develop solutions for real-world problems.
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This is the 10th anniversary of Space Apps and this year NASA is partnering with nine international space agencies to bring the largest annual global hackathon in the world to even more communities. This year is special because for the first time Space Apps will feature a challenge from every SMD division! Visit the Space Apps challenge web page to see the challenge ideas from your colleagues and to check out Helio’s challenge. You can sign up to participate via the Space Apps registration page and please consider sharing this information with others you know who may be interested.
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Huge congratulations are due to Goddard’s Elizabeth MacDonald, Mei-Ching Hannah Fok, and James A. Klimchuk, who were recognized as part of the American Geophysical Union’s 2021 honors! Dr. MacDonald received the Space Physics and Aeronomy Richard Carrington Education and Public Outreach Award, Dr. Fok has been selected for the James Van Allen Lecture, and Dr. Klimchuk will give the Eugene Parker Lecture.
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I also want to thank those of you who participated in our Early Career Roundtables this summer. We would like to continue these discussions and invite early and mid- career individuals in the space science and heliophysics community to participate in the next series of round table discussions and/or provide additional feedback to us at Headquarters (we are defining early career as approximately 2 years before dissertation to 7 years after dissertation and defining mid-career as approximate 7-20 years post dissertation). To self-nominate, please complete this webform by September 22, 2021. There is a short fuse on this request as we are hoping to host the round tables in late September/early October. We encourage you to share this information with colleagues inside and outside your department who might know of or be early or mid-career researchers.
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Finally, I want to encourage early-career researches to join a series of upcoming webinars dedicated to the upcoming Decadal Survey for Solar and Space Physics (Heliophysics). The upcoming Decadal will generate recommendations to advance and expand solar and space physics frontiers in the current decade, guiding federal investments by describing the highest priority science goals. Input and participation from the research community-particularly from graduate students, postdocs, and early tenure-track professionals–is critical for the success of this effort. Please join the National Academies for a two-part webinar series designed for early-career researchers to learn how you can get involved in the decadal survey process on September 30 and October 18 at 2pm ET. While these webinars are intended for early-career professionals, anyone interested in learning more about the decadal survey process is welcome to attend.
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It’s a great time to be a Heliophysicist.
#HelioRocks
Nicky
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P.S. If you know of others interested in receiving this email, please direct them here. Thanks!
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