Table of Contents ====================================================================== 1. New GEM Student Representative 2. ESA Liaison Report: Summer GEM 2012 3. Japan Liaison Report: Summer GEM 2012 4. GEM Mailing List Update ====================================================================== *************************** ** THE GEM MESSENGER ** *************************** Volume 22, Number 14 July 12, 2012 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. New GEM Student Representative ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: David Sibeck The GEM steering committee welcomes Roxanne Katus from the University of Michigan, who will serve as student representative in conjunction with Nathaniel Frissell. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. ESA Liaison Report: Summer GEM 2012 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Benoit Lavraud (IRAP, Toulouse, France) This report concerns recent news regarding space plasma missions in Europe. Note that points 1 and 2 about current and upcoming missions from the 2011 report are still valid, and are not repeated here. 1 - Large-size Call L1 Selection The Jupiter JUICE mission was recently selected by ESA for implementation. It is planned for launch in 2022. It will study in part the ionized environment of Jupiter and its moons. It is characterised by a 7.6 years cruise and 3.5 years operation in the Jovian system. The call for payload proposal was just released and responses are expected October 1st, 2012. 2 - Medium-size Call M2 Selection Solar Orbiter was selected last year. Launch is planned in 2017. 3 - Small-size call S1 proposals 76 letters of intent were submitted in March, but only 26 proposals were apparently submitted. This comes from the fact that ESA was asking for a very strong support from member state agencies for the proposed mission (i.e., ESA was in fact only offering to pay for a third to half of the total mission cost). There have been a number of space plasma missions relevant to GEM: - TOR: it plans to use a Sun-pointing spinner together with new measurement techniques to study solar wind turbulence with unprecedented abilities (i.e., at highest frequencies). - AXIOM-C: the purpose is to make Advanced X-ray Imaging Of the Magnetosphere and Cusp and thus study the magnetopause and cusp response to changes in solar wind. Charge exchange between solar wind highly-ionized heavy ions and geocorona neutrals leads to emissions in soft X-ray lines that can be observed in particular in the cusp where neutral density is high. - NITRO: the mission is focused on the study of ionospheric outflows and specifically plans to distinguish Oxygen from Nytrogen thanks to appropriate, new composition measurement techniques. - SELMA: the mission targets the origin of water on the moon but will also study plasma processes near the moon (i.e., solar wind reflection, magnetic anomalies, etc.) - There are possibly 1 or 2 more missions, but at the time of writing of this report official submissions have not been disclosed. 4 - KuaFu-B mission The Chinese space agency contacted ESA last year to study the possibility of contributing to the KuaFu mission. China would build the solar wind L1 orbiter (i.e., KuaFu-A), while ESA would contribute 2 magnetospheric spacecraft (i.e., KuaFu-B). ESA put in place a SST (Science Study Team) over the last 6 months, which wrote a proposal for Kuafu-B. The proposed concept consists in 2 satellites on the same orbit, but in opposition of phase, with only two UV auroral imagers (one wide and one narrow field-of-view) on each spacecraft, in order to (1) continually measure the northern aurora and (2) simultaneously measure the northern and southern hemisphere aurorae on a frequent basis. The proposal will be examined by ESA committees in the fall 2012. 5 - ESA Space Weather Programme ESA's space weather programme - part of the Space Situational Awareness (SSA) programme - is currently studying various opportunities to embark space weather-oriented particle instruments onboard various platforms (e.g., geosynchronous telecom satellites). 6 - European Union Space programme In addition to ESA and member state agencies efforts, the European Union also issues calls to supports space-related sciences (not only space plasmas, of course, but several magnetospheric and heliospheric proposals were selected in the last round). The official 2013 FP7 Space Work Programme and Call for Proposals will be published on July 10th 2012, and the deadline for proposals is expected to be November 21st. The total amount of EU funding expected to be available for projects is EUR 126 million, compared with EUR 84 million last year. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Japan Liaison Report: Summer GEM 2012 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Hedi Kawano , Masaki Fujimoto, and Iku Shinohara (ISAS/JAXA, Japan) (1) Currently-running space-physics satellites of ISAS are Akebono, GEOTAIL, and REIMEI. (2) Akebono is a monitor of the inner magnetosphere. Akebono is planned to continue until the rise of the next solar max is firmly confirmed so that full two solar cycles will be covered. The issue will be subject to review by the science steering committee of ISAS every year. Requests of Akebono data are to be sent to Dr. Matsuoka (Project Manager): matsuoka [at] stp.isas.jaxa.jp (3) It is for sure that GEOTAIL will continue until the end of Mar. 2016. (4) The year 2012 marks the 20th year from the launch of GEOTAIL on July 24, 1992. Thus, an international symposium will be held in Tokyo on Nov. 12-14, 2012 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. Details will be announced soon. (5) NASA is continuously supporting GEOTAIL (tracking by DSN (Deep Space Network), and making level-1 data), and THEMIS-GEOTAIL conjunctions are a reason; thus, when you analyze THEMIS data, please also use simultaneous GEOTAIL data. To help it, ISAS has been making efforts to further facilitate access to GEOTAIL data; for example, the THEMIS TDAS software will be able to directly read GEOTAIL data in the near future. (6) At the same time, you can easily browse data plots of both GEOTAIL and THEMIS at a website called CEF (Conjunction Event Finder): http://darts.isas.jaxa.jp/stp/cef/cef.cgi At CEF, GEOTAIL data can be browsed about two weeks after the acquisition of the data. (To be more specific, magnetic field data, electric field data, and low-energy plasma data, can be browsed.) (7) GEOTAIL digital data are open to public at a website called DARTS at http://darts.isas.jaxa.jp/stp/index.html.en When you have used the GEOTAIL data in your paper, please tell that to ISAS, for the record. The DARTS website shows where to contact. Requests of GEOTAIL digital data that are not found at DARTS are to be sent to both Prof. Fujimoto (Project Scientist): fujimoto [at] stp.isas.jaxa.jp and Dr. Shinohara (Project Manager): iku [at] stp.isas.jaxa.jp (8) REIMEI is at 600km height and provides high-resolution data on auroral dynamics. High cadence electron and imagery data are available until 2007. Only imagery data are available after 2008. Since the REIMEI camera zooms-in to a 100km × 100km region possibly embedded in the THEMIS GBO field of view, there is a chance of performing cross-scale coupling science in the context of auroral physics. Science operation of REIMEI might be terminated at the end of this FY (March 2013). The Point of Contact for REIMEI is Dr. Asamura at ISAS, JAXA: asamura [at] stp.isas.jaxa.jp (9) SCOPE is a mission for simultaneous multi-scale observations of space plasma. It consists of multi satellites, and international collaborations are in its vision. The mission proposal of SCOPE was submitted to ISAS in September 2008, and it has passed the mission definition review (MDR). Collaborative study with Canadian CSA had been in progress, but in Oct 2011, CSA told ISAS that they cannot continue the study any more. The planned launch year of SCOPE had been 2019, but now, without any international partner, it is open. While the original plan of collaborating with European Cross-Scale was terminated, there still is a strong interest from both sides in collaborating via one shape or another. Strong interest from the US community is acknowledged, and in that sense, it is very regrettable that we cannot be very encouraging at this time. (10) ERG is a satellite to explore the inner magnetosphere. It will utilize the spacecraft bus system built for "small scientific satellite program" at ISAS. The planned launch year of ERG is FY2015. Collaborations with RBSP and RESONANCE are in its vision. (11) In addition to the above-stated Earth-orbiting missions, the Mercury mission BepiColombo MMO [Mercury Magnetospheric Orbiter] (launch 2015) is put together in a unified framework. This everything- linked-together style is the strength of the Japanese community. Indeed, recent exciting plasma measurement results from the lunar orbiter Kaguya are elevating the mood of the MMO team. With the help from two JAXA's International Top Young Fellows, the community is expanding its research horizon towards the magnetospheres of outer planets. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. GEM Mailing List Update ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Peter Chi With the help from Workshop Organizers at Virginia Tech, we have recently updated the GEM Mailing List by incorporating the e-mail addresses of new participants in the GEM Workshop. If you wish to change your e-mail address for the GEM Mailing List, or you find that you are receiving multiple copies of GEM Messenger, please follow the instructions below to opt in or opt out of the GEM Mailing List. If you encounter any problem with your subscription to GEM Messenger, feel free to contact me at the E-mail address above. +-------------------------------------------------------------------+ | To subscribe GEM Messengers, send an e-mail to | | | | with the following command in the body of your e-mail message: | | subscribe gem | | To remove yourself from the mailing list, the command is: | | unsubscribe gem | | | | To broadcast a message to the GEM community, please contact | | Peter Chi at | | | | Please use plain text as the format of your submission. | | | | GEM Messenger is also posted online via newsfeed at | | http://heliophysics.blogspot.com and | | http://www.facebook.com/heliophysics | | | | Back issues are available at ftp://igpp.ucla.edu/scratch/gem/ | | | | URL of GEM Home Page: http://aten.igpp.ucla.edu/gemwiki | | Workshop Information: http://www.cpe.vt.edu/gem/index.html | +-------------------------------------------------------------------+