December 16, 2011, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Director's Seminar

John F. Cooper (NASA/GSFC), Lunar Solar Origins Exploration (LunaSOX)

Abstract: The Moon offers a unique vantage point from which to investigate the Sun and its interaction via the solar wind magnetic fields, plasma, and energetic particles with the geospace system including the Moon itself. The lunar surface and exosphere provide in part a record of solar coronal plasma material input and resultant space weathering over billions of years. The structure and dynamics of solar wind interactions with the Moon provide an accessible near-Earth laboratory environment for study of general solar wind interactions with the vast multitude of airless asteroidal bodies of the inner solar system. Spacecraft in lunar orbit can have the often simultaneous opportunity, except when in the Earth's magnetosphere, to make in-situ compositional measurements of the solar wind plasma and to carry out remote observations from the Moon of the solar corona, potentially enabled by lunar limb occultation of the solar disk. The LunaSOX Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is addressing the following science objectives for "heliophysics of and from the Moon" with support from NASA's Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research (LASER) program: (1) specify history of solar wind parameters at and sunward of the Moon through enhanced access (http://lunasox.gsfc.nasa.gov/) to legacy and operational mission data products from the Apollo era to the present, (2) model field and plasma interactions with the lunar surface, exosphere, and wake, as constrained by the available data, through hybrid kinetic code simulations, and (3) advance mission concepts for heliophysics from and of the Moon.

Adam Szabo (NASA/GSFC), Solar Probe Plus: A Mission into the Solar Corona

Abstract: The NASA Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission, to be launched in 2018, will approach the Sun as close as 9.5 solar radii well below the solar wind Alfven point where the solar corona is still expected to partially corotate with the solar photospheric surface. SPP will address fundamental heliophysics questions that have been outstanding for decades, such as the acceleration of the solar wind, the evolution of inner heliospheric structures and the production of solar energetic particles. The mission will present substantial technical challenges mostly related to the extreme thermal environment this close to the Sun. But a comprehensive in-situ fields and particles instrument suite, along with a white light imager, have been successfully accommodate on the spacecraft bus. The current status of the mission and its forthcoming challenges will be discussed.

Georgia A. De Nolfo (NASA/GSFC), The Solar Probe Plus High Energy Particle Experiment

Abstract: One of the key scientific questions for Solar Probe Plus (SPP) is the understanding of how Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) are accelerated. This question is the prime focus of the Energetic Particle Instrument - High Energy (EPI-Hi), that Goddard, JPL, and Caltech are building for SPP. The relative importance of magnetic reconnection (solar flares) and shock acceleration (Coronal Mass Ejections) is still being debated. The SPP findings will not only improve our knowledge of these SEPs that can affect satellites and astronauts, but also will have implications for other particle acceleration sites in the universe such as quasars and supernova remnants