Bulletin of the American Physical Society
Joint Fall 2017 Meeting of the Texas Section of the APS, Texas Section of the AAPT, and Zone 13 of the Society of Physics Students
Volume 62, Number 16
Friday–Saturday, October 20–21, 2017; The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas
Session E5: Space Physics II |
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Chair: Jodi Cooley-Sekula, Southern Methodist University Room: DGAC 1.131 |
Friday, October 20, 2017 4:15PM - 4:27PM |
E5.00001: CubeSats in Space Science Russell Stoneback The history of space science satellite missions and instrument development has largely been driven by custom scientific hardware on expensive satellites designed, built, and operated by large teams. The rise of CubeSats, small spacecraft built in discrete cubical segments (10 x 10 x 10 cm is 1U), offers an alternative to this paradigm. CubeSats began with hardware designed by small student teams at universities. Now there are a broad range of companies developing CubeSat hardware that potentially offer performance suitable for scientific missions.~ The Center for Space Sciences (CSS) at the University of Texas at Dallas has been developing satellite instrumentation to support science since the OGO-6 mission (June, 1969). The Ion Velocity Meter (IVM) developed by the CSS measures thermal plasma properties, density, ion temperature, composition, and velocity. Eight of these instruments are scheduled to fly on the upcoming NASA Ionospheric Connections (ICON) Explorer and the NOAA/NSPO Cosmic-2 constellation mission. A CubeSat version of the IVM is on the upcoming NASA SORTIE and SPORT CubeSats. An overview of the IVM, the translation to the CubeSat platform, upcoming missions, and student opportunities will be given.~ [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 20, 2017 4:27PM - 4:39PM |
E5.00002: Bounce resonant scattering by magnetosonic waves -- diffusion coefficients and a parametric study Armando Maldonado, Lunjin Chen Electron bounce resonant scattering is a new area of interest in Van Allen radiation belt modeling. Magnetosonic waves are suspected as one of the main driving forces for bounce resonant scattering. Bounce diffusion rates with magnetosonic waves are useful in relating simulations to observations and previous studies have attempted to calculate and understand these rates. In the past, these studies have used a guiding center approach for the gyrating electron, ignoring effects such as the Lamor radius effect, changes in the first adiabatic invariant and latitudinal wave power distribution. In this study, our motivation is to explore these effects in comparison with previous studies to understand their importance. A set of theoretical bounce diffusion rates are provided along with test-particle simulation diffusion rates which are found to closely agree with each other. Additionally, we provide a parametric study on the electron's, magnetosonic wave's and environment background properties to understand the behavior of bounce resonant scattering. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 20, 2017 4:39PM - 4:51PM |
E5.00003: Stratospheric Organism and Radiation Analyzer Samuel A. Garcia Morelos, Fre'Etta Brooks, Steven Oliver, Alejandra Cruz, Diego Hernandez, Jaime Juarez, Reed Masek, Debora Mroczek, Dorian Pena, Kevin Portillo, Andrew Renshaw, Andrew Walker SORA was selected to fly with HASP on a NASA high-altitude balloon mission on December 2016. The High Altitude Student Platform is designed to carry twelve payloads to an altitude of about 30 km for a flight duration of 15 to 20 hours. The University of Houston team consists of 12 students and a faculty advisor. SORA successfully completed its mission on September 2017, sampling for extremophiles and analyzing distinct aspects of the surrounding environment such as radiation exposure, temperature, pressure and humidity. The student designed and built payload had three main scientific objectives: isolate surrounding air, analyze for radiation, and monitor environmental conditions. To isolate surrounding air and sample for cells, the team designed and built a novel system using commercial vacuum pumps. A MiniPIX device analyzed cosmic radiation, while UV sensors collected data for the duration of the flight. Lastly, an onboard flight computer monitored environmental conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and humidity. This same computer also controlled all aspects of the payload, such as serial commands to control pump operation. Overall, the payload design employed additive manufacturing and hobby electronics in its construction to provide an accessible basis for future missions. The preliminary results from the biological sampling analysis, MiniPIX data, and environmental monitoring will be presented. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 20, 2017 4:51PM - 5:03PM |
E5.00004: Modeling the Effects of Equatorial Ionospheric Disturbances on High Frequency Transmissions Through Ray Tracing. Matthew Proctor Ionospheric disturbances in low latitudes can alter HF transmission paths from the path in a quiet ionosphere; which can cause false target readings in over-the-horizon (OTH) radar. We have developed a two-dimensional ray tracing model from which we are quantifying disturbance effects on OTH radar. Our model uses a Runge-Kutta 4th order integration method to determine the rays path from the provided initial values of the take-off angle of the transmission with the longitude and altitude of the transmitter. These disturbances are specified by the output of the High-Resolution Bubble Model with spatial resolution of 1 km. We show that the rays paths are greatly altered from quiet time and a perturbed ionosphere. [Preview Abstract] |
Friday, October 20, 2017 5:03PM - 5:15PM |
E5.00005: The Global Gravity Gradient Field of the Planet Mars Determined using a Spherical Harmonic Expansion and the Fourier Transform: A Comparative Analysis Juan Hinojosa The planetary geophysics community now has available high-resolution gravity and surface topography fields of the planet Mars due to the recent spacecraft missions to the planet. This research deals with a comparative analysis of the global gravity gradient field of the planet Mars determined using two approaches: (1) spherical harmonic expansion (the radial gravity gradient, $g_{r,r})$, and (2) Fourier transform (the vertical gravity gradient, $g_{z,z})$. While the gravity gradient has been used extensively in exploration geophysics studies (via the Fourier transform), only recently has the gravity gradient been used globally in planetary geophysics (via spherical harmonic expansions). Since a spherical harmonic expansion calculation is very computationally intensive, unlike a Fourier transform calculation, the goal of this research is to investigate the accuracy in terms of the RMS error of the global gravity gradient obtained using the Fourier transform compared to that obtained using a spherical harmonic expansion. [Preview Abstract] |
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