SwRI chosen by NASA to study solar particles and space weather CuSPP

NASA has selected Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) to develop CuSPP, a CubeSat mission to study Solar Particles over the Earth's Poles. SwRI will also lead mission science operations and data analysis.

During the five-year project, engineers and scientists will design, develop and integrate a CubeSat, a nano-satellite launched as a secondary payload on another satellite mission, carrying a novel miniaturized Suprathermal Ion Sensor (SIS) developed at SwRI.

The SIS will measure the sources and acceleration mechanisms of solar energetic particles that are harmful to astronauts as well as Earth-based technologies.

CuSPP can also be used to support space weather research by measuring particles that escape ahead of powerful shock waves in the solar wind.

Upon striking the Earth, solar particles and shock waves can cause severe electromagnetic storms, damage satellites, disrupt radio communication and navigation signals, damage electric power grids and corrode pipelines.

In addition, CuSPP is designed to measure the properties of ion populations entering the ionosphere, the uppermost portion of the Earth's atmosphere.

"Upon successful completion, we expect CuSPP to have achieved several key goals, such as increasing the technological readiness level and reducing the risks and costs of flying a new class of SwRI science instruments for studying heliophysics, the Sun's effects on the solar system," says Dr. Mihir Desai, CuSPP principal investigator and a staff scientist in the SwRI Space Science and Engineering Division.

"We also expect to provide critical measurements that shed light on the origins of hazardous charged particle populations accelerated at the Sun and interplanetary space, as well as play a major role in developing reliable nano-satellites for NASA and other sponsors."

CuSPP will fly as a secondary payload as early as 2017. It will reside in a high-inclination (> 65 degrees) low-Earth orbit, approximately 500 km above Earth, for the duration of its mission.

The primary satellite on which CuSPP will launch will be named at a later date.

The CubeSat concept was developed in 1999 as an academic tool to provide students with an inexpensive way to gain hands-on experience in designing and building satellites.

More recently, they have been used for scientific research, exploration, technology development and operations.

A standard CubeSat is a 10 centimeter cube with a one-liter volume. CuSPP is 30 by 10 by 10 centimeters with a volume of three liters.

NASA has increased the reliability and functionality of CubeSats to extend the use of this miniaturized platform into deep space.

The agency recently implemented a new CubeSat initiative for its Science Mission Directorate (SMD).

SwRI is collaborating with the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., to produce the CubeSat, including the flight segment (integrated at SwRI), ground segment (provided by the NASA Wallops Flight Facility) and payload (developed at SwRI).

CuSPP was selected as part of the 2013 Heliophysics-Technology and Instrument Development for Science (H-TIDeS) 2013 competition, with funding from the new NASA SMD-wide CubeSat initiative managed by NASA's Heliophysics Division.

NASA ACE is tracking electron beams (Strahls) from the Sun

NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) observes a wide array of particles that flow toward Earth from the sun to better understand the great space weather system that connects the sun to our planet. 

Credit: NASA/H. Zell

In the quest to understand how the world's weather moves around the globe, scientists have had to tease apart different kinds of atmospheric movement, such as the great jet streams that can move across a whole hemisphere versus more intricate, localized flows.

Much the same must currently be done to understand the various motions at work in the great space weather system that links the sun and Earth as the sun shoots material out in all directions, creating its own version of a particle sea to fill up the solar system.

"People think of the sun as giving out light and heat," says Ruth Skoug, a space scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in N.M. "But it is also always losing particles, losing mass."

For example, the sun sends out a steady outflow of solar particles called the solar wind and additionally giant, sudden explosions of material called coronal mass ejections or CMEs erupt out into space.

Skoug studies a third kind of particle flow: jets of high-energy electrons streaming from the sun known as electron strahl.

Through a new five-year study of observations of the strahl, Skoug and her colleagues have researched another piece of this giant space weather puzzle around Earth.

Skoug says that each fast-moving electron is by and large constrained to move along magnetic field lines that flow out from the sun, some of which loop back to touch the sun again, others which extend out to the edges of the solar system.

The charge on an electron interacts with the field lines such that each particle sticks close to the line, somewhat like a bead on an abacus – with the added motion that the electron gyrates in circles around the field lines at the same time.

In general, the magnetic fields get weaker further away from the sun. A physical law that applies in those cases in which electrons are not pushed off course, or "scattered," demands that the electron gyrations get smaller and more stretched out along the field line.

If this were the only physics at work, therefore, one would expect the strahl to become a more and more focused, pencil-thin beam when measured near Earth.

This measurement is done by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) mission, but it shows that the expected focusing doesn't quite happen.

"Wherever we look, the electron strahl is much wider than we would have expected," says Eric Christian, the NASA's deputy project scientist for ACE at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"So there must be some process that helps scatter the electrons into a wider beam."

Indeed, the strahls come in a wide variety of sizes, so Skoug and her colleagues sifted through five years worth of ACE data to see if they could find any patterns.

While they spotted strahls of all widths, they did find that certain sizes showed up more frequently.

They also found that strahls along open field lines, those that do not return to the sun, have different characteristics than those on closed field lines, those that do return to the sun.

On the open field lines, the most common width by far is about ten times the size of the thin beam of electrons expected if there had been no extra scattering.

The closed field lines, however, showed a nearly equal number of strahls at that width and at a width some four times even larger.

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory: Massive Solar Prominence Eruption

The sun on June 7, 2011, starting at about 06:41 UT, unleashed one of the most spectacular prominence eruptions ever observed, or "prominence explosion".

ESA SOHO: Particle Storm

A SOHO directed CME has showered the LASCO C3 camera with high-energy particles

Pictures courtesy of ESA SOHO

Severe Solar storm 93 million miles away, followed by death and destruction

• A 'perfect storm' of plasma and solar energy on a course to Earth at the speed of light could cause a global economic disaster. Picture: Getty

The sun, the scientists say, is awakening from a long and deep slumber and set to embark on a period of violent solar activity that could send devastating electromagnetic radiation racing to our planet.

One massive storm on the sun's surface, 93 million miles away, would be powerful enough to knock out power grids, destroy satellites controlling GPS and communications networks, ground airlines and throw the world's banking system into chaos.

The disruption to the fuel chain and subsequent breakdown in social order could leave governments powerless and tens of millions without clean water, access to medicines or fresh food, Nasa studies suggest.

If it sounds like the plot of Hollywood's latest apocalyptic movie, scientists are taking the threat seriously enough to have called government officials, disaster response managers, power company chiefs and other interested parties to a space weather forum in Washington DC yesterday.

"A storm of this magnitude would be a low probability event but would have a very high impact," said Chris St Cyr, a senior astrophysicist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland.

"It might not happen as often as hurricanes, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions but we are more vulnerable than ever before. Now, we use satellites for mobile phones, navigation, communication, just running your Visa card through to make a purchase.

"Our power grids are interconnected and would act as one giant antenna in a big geomagnetic storm. There's a need to highlight to those in decision-making positions that this is a natural hazard that we didn't have to worry about in the 1970s, but now we do."

St Cyr's colleagues at Nasa's Heliophysics Science Division, which studies the sun's relationship with Earth and neighbouring planets, say solar activity runs in cycles averaging 11 years, with the next peak due in late 2012 into 2013.

"We have been in an extended phase of minimal activity, which typically lasts two to three years but this time has been more than four," St Cyr said.

As solar activity builds, an increase in sunspots, cooler areas on the surface caused by increased magnetic activity, leads to more eruptions known as solar flares that blast highly-charged particles of energy into the universe.

Japan to launch 'space yacht' propelled by solar particles

Japan is to launch a "space yacht" propelled by solar particles that bounce off its kite-shaped sails, the country's space agency said Tuesday.

A rocket carrying the Ikaros -- an acronym for Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation of the Sun -- will blast off from the Tanegashima space centre in southern Japan on May 18.

"Ikaros is a 'space yacht' that gets propulsion from the pressure of sunlight particles bouncing off its sail," Yuichi Tsuda, space systems expert at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), told journalists.

The flexible sails, which are thinner than a human hair, are also equipped with thin-film solar cells to generate electricity to create "a hybrid technology of electricity and pressure", Tsuda said.

"Solar sails are the technology that realises space travel without fuel as long as we have sunlight. The availability of electricity would enable us to navigate farther and more effectively in the solar system."

Ikaros, which has cost 1.5 billion yen (16 million dollars) to develop, will be the first use of the technology in deep space, as past experiments have been limited to unfolding its sails in orbits around the Earth, said Tsuda.

JAXA plans to control the path of Ikaros by changing the angle at which sunlight particles bounce off the silver-coloured sail.

Ikaros will be a short cylindrical shape when it is released into space and will then extend its 14-metre (46 foot) sail, JAXA said.

The name of the spacecraft alludes to Icarus, the figure from Greek mythology who flew too close to the sun and fell into the sea, but Tsuda promised that "this Ikaros will not fly into the sun".

The same rocket will also launch Japan's first satellite bound for Venus, called the Akatsuki, or PLANET-C, which will work closely with Venus Express, a satellite sent earlier by the European Space Agency.

In coming years, JAXA may launch other bold projects.

Mysterious Spot found on Venus

(Illustration: Melillo/Maxson/ESA/University of Wisconsin-Madison/ALPO)

A new, bright spot in the clouds of Venus was reported by amateur astronomer Frank Melillo on 19 July

Observations show that the spot had already spread out somewhat by the end of last week, and astronomers are awaiting more recent observations from Venus Express.

The spot is bright at ultraviolet wavelengths, which may argue against a meteoroid impact as a cause. That's because rocky bodies, with the exception of objects very rich in water ice, should cause an impact site to darken at ultraviolet wavelengths as it fills with debris that absorbs such light, says Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Venus Express team.

Powerful eruption?

Another possibility is that a gust of charged particles from the sun could have created the glow by energising a patch of the upper atmosphere. Alternatively, waves in the atmosphere, which trigger turbulence and are thought to carry material up and down, could have concentrated bright material to create the spot.

A volcanic eruption is another suspect. Venus boasts the most volcanoes of any planet in the solar system, and nearly 90% of its surface is covered by basaltic lava flows, although no 'smoking gun' has yet been found for current volcanic activity. But an eruption would have had to be very powerful to punch through a dense layer in Venus's atmosphere to create the spot some 65 to 70 kilometres above the planet's surface.

"It's fair to say something unusual happened on Venus. Unfortunately, we don't know what happened," Limaye