*************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 6, Number 43 July 25, 1996 ----------------------------------------------------------- Report on the GEM Steering Committee Meeting, June 29, 1996 ----------------------------------------------------------- From: Jeff Hughes (HUGHES at buasta.bu.edu) Report from Washington: Bob Clauer reported on the status of the GEM program (healthy but not growing), the Space Weather Program (about 80 proposals recieved for the $1.2 million available. Decisions will be announced in early August), and the Polar Cap Observatory (it remains a possible for funding in FY98). There is approximately $500k available for new GEM proposals which has a mid October target date. Meeting's Next Year: We settled on the third week on June (June 16-20) for next year's meeting in Snowmass. The Silvertree is now booked for that week. (Snowmass is completely booked with three other groups during the week we usually have.) CEDAR will also be meeting in Boulder a week earlier than they usually meet next year, so CEDAR and GEM will be meeting on consecutive weeks as usual. There will probably be a joint SHINE/GEM/CEDAR space weather meeting of some sort on the weekend between the GEM and CEDAR meetings. Details are still to be worked out. Working Group Co-chairs can decide whether it will be useful for their working groups to meet before the AGU in San Francisco. As the AGU meeting starts on Sunday, Dec 15, these meetings (if held) will be on Saturday Dec 14. Harlan Spence will coordinate rooms for those Working Groups that want them. Responsibility for the GGCM/applications workshop that has been held in Boulder in January for the last few years will shift to the Space Weather Program with Howard Singer taking the lead. The meeting will broaden to include solar/solar wind and ionospheric modelers. A meeting to be held in Yosemite is planned for early Feb 97. This will be the latest in the series of Yosemite meetings. The focus will include GGS/GEM coordinated studies. Harlan Spence is representing GEM on the program committee. GGCM Campaign: Following the extensive discussions at the meeting on how to build a GGCM, the Steering Committee endorsed the GGCM Campaign's plan to write an informal call for proposals in this years funding cycle that would ask for studies of how a GGCM should be structured. As a result of these studies, next year proposals to start building a GGCM would be considered. A small committee headed by Dick Wolf will write this informal call for proposals in the next few weeks. It will be circulated in time for the October proposal target date. Inner Magnetosphere/Storm Campaign: Mary Hudson reported that the planning for this campaign was off to a great start and that everyone was anxious to get the campaign started. Two days will be devoted to this campaign at next years Snowmass Workshop. GEM Progress Report: It was decided that we should produce an Interim GEM Progress Report to document the achievements of the first 5 years of GEM. The plan is to have the writing done in the Fall so that the document can be printed and distributed by next year's workshop. The report will include a full list of GEM publications and reports from all the campaigns and working groups. Reports from International Liaisons: Brian Fraser (Australia) told us about plans for a new SuperDARN style HF radar in Tasmania, TIGER (Tasman International Geospace Environment Radar), that will look south towards the Antarctic coast. This is a ideal location from which to observe typical substorm onset latitudes (which are often equatorward of the fields-of-view of the current SuperDARN radars). This radar will also allow simultaneous day/night SuperDARN observations to be made in the same hemisphere for the first time. Rumi Nakamura (representing Atsuhiro Nishida, Japan) reported that Geotail, now in a 10x30 Re orbit, is projected to run out of station-keeping fuel in Dec 97. Long eclipses, when instruments will have to be turned off to preserve power, present the greatest danger. Geotail will be tracked as long as it's returning good data. Eigil Friis-Christensen (Denmark/Europe) announced that the Danish magnetic field satellite Orsted (low altitude, polar orbiting, with a magnetometer and particle instrument) is now expected to be launched by May 1997. The satellite will be completely built and tested ready for shipping in Nov. A follow on magnetic field spacecraft mission has been proposed to ESA. He also told us of plans for two new magnetometers in Greenland, on the north coast and at the summit of the ice cap (where there is a European drilling station). Alan Rodger (UK/Europe/Antarctica) reported that it was hoped that the Cluster ground-based coordination effort will now be used to support the POLAR mission. There is not yet consensus in Europe on the best option for the recovery of the Cluster science. However the launch of the spare (5th) Cluster s/c - the Phoenix Mission - as soon as possible (an option GEM formally supported in a letter to ESA) was being strongly pressed. The EISCAT Svalbard radar is now operational. Between the US and UK, 8 AGO's are now operating in Antarctica. The SANAE SuperDARN radar will be deployed in January 1997, with a field of view that overlaps with the existing Halley and Syowa HF radars. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |To add name to the mailing list, send a message to: editor at igpp.ucla.edu | |For message to whole GEM mailing list, send to: gem at igpp.ucla.edu | | | |URL of GEM Home Page: http://igpp.ucla.edu/gem/Welcome.html | |Please update your e-mail address. | |CAUTION: Do not send messages to gem at igpp.ucla.edu unless you want | | your message to go to everyone in the GEM mailing list! | +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+