UCL – DEPARTMENT OF SPACE AND CLIMATE PHYSICS
MULLARD SPACE SCIENCE LABORATORY
The Newsletter - Volume 10, Issue 4
30 June 2013
Covers events between 1 December 2012 and 31 May 2013
Contents
New Staff Members................................................................................................................................................1
Visitors ....................................................................................................................................................................1
Grants and Contracts ............................................................................................................................................2
Prizes and Awards .................................................................................................................................................2
Appointments (eg Editorial Boards or Committees) Grants and Contracts Awarded ...................................2
Proposals /White papers .......................................................................................................................................2
Mission Status and Developments ......................................................................................................................2
Publications ..........................................................................................................................................................3
Outreach .................................................................................................................................................................5
Media Broadcasts and Features ..........................................................................................................................5
Other News Items/Activities .................................................................................................................................6
Acknowledgements ...............................................................................................................................................6
Next Issue ...............................................................................................................................................................6
New Staff Members
We are pleased to welcome Jake Cutler who joined
the Electronics Workshop on 11 January and Dr I.
Jonathan Rae who joined the Space Plasma
Physics Group as a new lecturer on 1 April. Jonny
joins us from the University of Alberta, and will be
working on space plasma physics in the Earth’s
Van Allen Radiation Belts and the magnetospheric
substorm. He adds experience of ground-based
space plasma physics to complement our existing
expertise in space-based observations and is
involved primarily in ground-based missions in
North America such as the CARISMA
magnetometer network and ground- and space-
based missions such as the NASA THEMIS and
Van Allen Probes.
Visitors
On 16 January, Sarah Hill and Kieran Shah from
the National Space Centre and National Space
Academy gave an interesting talk on the activities of
the National Space Academy and their efforts to
interest 14-19 year olds towards the UK space
industry. The talk was very interactive and enjoyed
by many of MSSL’s staff and PhD students.
A Leverhulme workshop took place on the week of
20 May. This was the third in a series of
international workshops funded by Leverhulme to
explore the linkage between the solar interior and
the activity in the atmosphere.
off during the reporting period. NESC report
indicated CAPS is unlikely to be activated in near
future, but a white paper (with contributions by
Coates, Jones, Arridge) has been drafted to
summarise CAPS discoveries and continue the
science team, as well as suggesting operations if
safe in the proximal orbits (2017). Scientific
analysis continued apace (see publications and
presentations).
Grants and Contracts
The Cassini operations grant has been renewed
until December 2013.
The UKSA/STFC award for the build of the Solar
Orbiter SWA harness was finally made on 26
March.
Cluster - The Cluster mission extension for 2013-4
was confirmed by ESA in November 2012. Plans
for a further 2015-6 extension are expected to be
reviewed by ESA in summer 2013.
ISSI team awarded to Louise Harra - topic “energy
transformation in solar and stellar flares”.
All four Cluster spacecraft and all four PEACE
instruments continue to operate well although,
since the beginning of May, PEACE on spacecraft
3 has experienced some problems. An extensive
set of real-time tests has resulted in the team
finding a work-around solution whereby the
instrument is returning nearly the full set of data
products. Some small issues still exist so tests to
find an ideal solution are ongoing.
ISSI Team awarded to David Long - topic “The
nature of coronal bright fronts”.
Prizes and Awards
Jack Carlyle, one of our first year solar physics
PhD students, won Best Poster prize at the IAUS
300 - Nature of prominences and their role in
space weather held in Paris, 14 June.
David Long, a Post-doc in the solar group won a
Thomas Metcalf Fellowship to attend the
LWS/SDO Workshop on “Exploring the network of
SDO science” in Cambridge, MD.
Andrew Fazakerley attended and presented at the
th
58 Cluster Science Operations Working Group
meeting at ESOC, 21-22 March.
Andrew Fazakerley, Natasha Doss, Iryna Rozum
and Branislav Mihaljcic attended and presented at
th
the 17 CAA cross-calibration workshop at ESOC 25-27 March.
Appointments (eg Editorial Boards or
Committees) Grants and Contracts
Awarded


Iryna Rozum left the PEACE ops team to take up a
new position at the European Centre for Medium
Range Weather Forecasts, 12 April.
Louise Harra was appointed to the National
Solar Observatories Council.
Sarah Matthews was appointed to the council
of the Royal Astronomical Society.
ExoMars – Regular telecons with ESA and TAS-I
are continuing. Progress continues on closing
action items, clarifying the SpaceWire interface
and preparing for delta-PDR due in autumn 2013.
Proposals /White papers


A Leverhulme Grant was submitted by Lucie
Green and Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi - Solar
magnetic activity: bridging the gap between
observation and theory.
Some 32 White Papers were submitted to ESA
by 24 May 2013 in response to the call for
L2/L3 missions “themes”, with eight coming
from the UK, four of which are with MSSL-lead.
Mat Page, Silvia Zane and Graziella
Branduardi-Raymont have contributed to the
White Paper (and Supporting Papers, published
at the Athena+ Website and in astro-ph) for the
next generation X-ray astronomy observatory
Athena+.
JUICE – Involvement with PEP team was secured.
PoleCATS - The PoleCATS student sounding
rocket experiment was launched to an altitude of
81.6 km from Esrange, Sweden, on 7 May, after a
challenging integration process. All systems
performed nominally and the stored data was
successfully recovered. The results will be
presented both at conferences and at a seminar at
MSSL.
Solar Orbiter - The Solar Orbiter SWA team
continues to be busy as the project moves towards
completion of the Structural Thermal Models
(STMs), the advancement of the engineering
models (EMs) and the need to complete critical
design review (CDR) activities and documentation
over the summer. The SWA/EAS STM has
undergone the vibration test successfully, while the
Mission Status and Developments
Cassini – is in its extended (Solstice) mission
phase. The CAPS instrument (including ELS) was
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EM/QM mechanical parts are in manufacture and
the electronics boards in layout. MSSL staff
members have represented the team at a number
of technical interface and working group meetings
and telecons, such as that hosted by MSSL on 10
April. Chris Owen and Andrew Fazakerley
represented SWA at a meeting of the SOWG, 1011 April at ESTEC. The main topics surrounded
the possible provision of low-latency data products
from the instrument payload, which would mean
key data products becoming available about 1 day
after they were recorded, rather than the 6 months
latency that will sometimes result from the orbital
and downlink configurations. This meeting was
followed up with a separate splinter of the “in situ
working group” at Imperial in London on 30 April,
which worked to ensure alignment of plans across
the 4 instruments which will make measurements
of the solar wind. Several other meetings were
held to address some of the key threats to the
scientific success of the mission which particularly
affect MSSL and SWA interests. A discussion
meeting to review the ongoing developments of the
High-Gain Antenna (HGA) coating was held at
ESTEC on May 13. MSSL is keen to see the
successful development of a conducting coating to
reduce the risk of the HGA becoming highly
charged with respect to the rest of the payload and
thereby affecting the electron measurements of
SWA/EAS. In addition, Chris Brockley-Blatt, Barry
Hancock and Andrew Fazakerley also attended a
meeting of the Boom WG which unveiled the
design of a new, longer boom. This again
addressed concerns relevant to SWA/EAS, in that
the STEIN instrument, which was impinging on the
EAS volume and field of view has now been
moved back onto the spacecraft body. Overall
progress on SWA was discussed with the UKSA
during a Project Management Board Telecon on 20
March.
Publications – Refereed
Published
Badman, S.V., A. Masters, H. Hasegawa, M.
Fujimoto, A. Radioti, D. Grodent, N. Sergis, M.
K. Dougherty, A. J. Coates, Bursty magnetic
reconnection at Saturn's magnetopause,
Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 1027–1031, Mar 2013.
Branduardi-Raymont, G., P.G. Ford, K.C. Hansen,
L. Lamy, A. Masters, B. Cecconi, A.J. Coates,
M.K. Dougherty, G.R. Gladstone, P. Zarka,
Search for Saturn’s X-ray aurorae at the arrival
of a solar wind shock, J. Geophys. Res., 118,
1–12, doi:10.1002/jgra.50112, May 2013.
Grand, R. J. J.; Kawata, D.; Cropper, M., Spiral
arm pitch angle and galactic shear rate in Nbody simulations of disc galaxies, Astronomy &
Astrophysics, Volume 553, id.A77, 11 pp. We
explore the observed galactic shear rate
(rotation curve shape) - spiral arm pitch angle
relation in the N-body simulation setting, and
robustly confirm that the relation (first order)
appears to exist in both the directly traceable
spiral arms and in a density wave framework.
The scatter (second order) shows that any
given spiral exhibits several pitch angle values
over time owing to their winding nature, which is
consistent with observations.
Grigorenko E.E., Malova, H. V., Artemiev, A. A.,
Kronberg, E., Koleva, R., Owen, C.J., Cao, J.
B., Sauvaud, J.-A., Zelenyi, L.M., Current sheet
structure and kinetic properties of plasma flows
during a near-Earth magnetic reconnection
under the presence of a guide field, J. Geophys.
Res., May 2013, DOI: 10.1002/jgra.50310
Rae, Jonathan I., Kyle R. Murphy, David M.
Miles, Clare E. J. Watt,, Ian R. Mann, Comment
on “Formation of Substorm Pi2: A coherent
response to auroral streamers and currents” by
Nishimura et al., J. Geophys. Res., 117,
doi:10.129/2012JA017889, 2012.
Sergis, N., C.M. Jackman, A. Masters, S.M.
Krimigis, M.F. Thomsen, D.C. Hamilton, D.G.
Mitchell, M.K. Dougherty, A.J. Coates, Particle
and magnetic field properties of the Saturnian
magnetosheath: Presence and upstream
escape of hot magnetospheric plasma, J.
Geophys. Res., 118, 1–15, Apr 2013.
Sunjammer - MSSL has been funded by the
UKSA to provide an instrument on NASA's
Sunjammer mission. This is a space probe that will
carry the largest solar sail ever flown in space - the
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size of ~4½ tennis courts or 1200m . MSSL will
provide the Solar Wind Analyser (SWAN) which is
designed to provide an early warning of potential
hazards from geomagnetic storms caused by
coronal mass ejections from the Sun. The mission
is scheduled for launch in late 2014.
Papers in press
Walsh, A.P., Arridge, C. S., Masters, A., Lewis, G.
R., Fazakerley, A. N., Jones, G. H., Owen, C. J.
and Coates, A. J., An indication of the existence
of a solar wind strahl at 10AU, Geophys. Res.
Lett., May 2013, in press.
Venus Express and Mars Express - ASPERA
continues to operate on both spacecraft and we
are involved in scientific papers (see lists).
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International Workshop of Advances and
Perspectives in Auroral Plasma Physics, France, 15 April:

Colin Forsyth presented recent results from a
study examining the substorm current wedge;

Andrew Fazakerley discussed past and
upcoming auroral campaigns for the Cluster
mission.
Long, David M., David R. Williams, Stéphane
Régnier, Louise K. Harra, Solar Physics,
Measuring the magnetic field strength of the
quiet solar corona using “EIT Waves”, in press.
Publications - Non-Refereed:
Coates, A.J., Book review, The Aeronautical
Journal, 117, 475-476, April 2013.
EGU General Assembly, Vienna, 7-12 April:
 Ali Varsani gave a talk and Kirthika Mohan
Narasimhan presented a poster. Both the
talk and the poster were very well received.
Kirthika also co-convened the inner
magnetosphere session.
 Masters, Adam, Lukasz Stawarz, Masaki
Fujimoto, Steve Schwartz, Nick Sergis,
Michelle Thomsen, Alessandro Retino,
Hiroshi Hasegawa, Bertalan Zieger,
Gethyn Lewis, Andrew Coates, Patrick
Canu, and Michele Dougherty, Electron
acceleration to relativistic energies at a
strong quasi-parallel shock wave.
 Ramanjooloo, Yudish, Geraint H. Jones,
Andrew J. Coates, Mathew J. Owens, and
Karl Battams, Comparing solar wind
velocity measurements derived from Sungrazing Comet Lovejoy (C/2011 W3) as
observed from multiple locations.
Invited Talks and Conferences
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics,
Cambridge, MA, USA, December 2012:

Bernhard Kliem on ``Rapid cavity formation and
expansion in CMEs'' (invited).
AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, 3-7 December
2012:

Bernhard Kliem gave an invited review entitled,
“CME initiation and evolution in the corona'';

Roger Duthie gave a presentation entitled
“Multi-Spacecraft Detections of Plasma Sheet
Fast Flows and their Relation to Dipolarisations
and Substorm Phase” at the AGU Fall Meeting
in San Francisco, 3-7 December 2012.
LWS/SDO Workshop, Cambridge, MD, 3-8 March:

David Long on “The Coronal Pulse
Identification
and
Tracking
Algorithm
(CorPITA)”
12th Annual International Astrophysics Conference
“Outstanding problems in Heliophysics: from
coronal heating to the edge of the heliosphere”,
Myrtle Beach, SC, 15-19 April:

Andrew Coates on Surprises from Saturn - and
implications for other environments (invited).
AGU Chapman meeting, Fundamental Properties
and Processes of Magnetotails, Reykjavik,
Iceland, 10-15 March:
 Colin Forsyth gave a talk on a comparison of
electron polytropic indices at Earth and Saturn.
Workshop on the Trailing Edges of High-Speed
Streams, University of Michigan,19-24 May:

Chris Owen was invited to present and talk.
The workshop was attended by a good mix of
experimenters, data analysts, theoreticians and
modellers/simulators and covered current
research efforts and future possibilities for
advancements in this area.
A follow-up
workshop is planned for the summer of 2014.
Stockholm
University
Astrobiology
Centre,
Schenströmska Herrgård, Sweden, 10-12
March:

Andrew Coates on Searching for life on other
planets (invited)
44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, held
March 18-22, The Woodlands, Texas:

Andrew Coates talked on Experimenetal
Results of Geometric Modeling and Accuracy
Assessment of an ExoMars Rover PanCam
Prototype. (Li, R., D. Li, K. Di, G. Paar, A.
Coates, J.P. Muller, A. Griffiths, J. Oberst, D.P.
Barnes, LPI Contribution No. 1719, p.2779,
2013)
IAU Symposium 300, Paris, 10-14 June:

Lucie Green – “Flux rope formation prior to
filament eruption”;

Deb Baker on “Hinode/EIS - SDO/AIA study of
a filament eruption”;

Lidia van Driel-Gesztelyi – “Observations and
modeling of magnetic reconnection driven by
CME expansion”;
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

Jack Carlyle – “Analysis of the Density
Evolution of In-falling Prominence Material from
the 7th June 2011 CME”;
Dave Williams – “Imaging and spectroscopic
measurements of ejected mass and UV
emission in a CME”.
science journalists, universities and
researchers.”
Colin Forsyth:

ISSI International Team Meetings:

Colin Forsyth attended the first meeting of an
ISSI International Team examining dawn-dusk
asymmetries in Earth’s magnetosphere. The
team is being led by MSSL alumnus Andrew
Walsh.


Lucie Green:
Graziella Branduardi-Raymont participated in a
meeting of the ISSI Team on “Solar wind
Charge Exchange (CX) soft X-ray imaging in
the solar system” in Bern, 14-18 January, and
talked about Jupiter X-ray emissions, and CX
X-ray observations and evidences from outside
the heliosphere. At the meeting a number of
possible publications were discussed, as well
as ways to publicise our efforts to develop a
space mission (like AXIOM) to map the solar
wind CX X-ray emission in the Earth's
magnetosphere. An outcome of the meeting
has been the submission of a session proposal
for the forthcoming European Planetary
Science Congress to take place in UCL in
September 2013. Graziella and collaborators
have been assigned as conveners of the
session “Plasma structures at the planets and
beyond”.







Visit to MSSL by Surrey Hills Society: Jack
Carlyle on “Student Life at MSSL”; Dave
Williams on “Observing the Sun from Space”, 5
June.
Andrew Coates:
talked on ‘Mars exploration – and the ExoMars
mission, for Foredown Tower Astronomers,
Brighton, 21 March and Croydon Astronomical
Society, 14 May.
Berend Winter

Roger Duthie:

Lecture to Wadhurst Astronomical Society:
Louise Harra
Sarah Matthews:

Holy Trinity school visit (comets)

Sandfield Primary school visit (solar power):

Sandfield Primary school visit (space and the
solar system)

Lecture to Guildford Astronomical Society on
solar activity and sunquakes

Talk to Burgess Hill school and UCL Academy
on the Sun and space weather
Jack Carlyle:

St. Teresa’s school visit to discuss latest in
solar physics;
Cardiff Scientific Society talk on the Sun and
Solar Orbiter;
‘Expert voice’ contribution for the Visions of the
Universe exhibition at the National Maritime
Museum which runs June to September 2013;
Space Boffins podcast on the Sun and Solar
Orbiter;
Lecture to Newbury Astronomical Society on
recent highlights in solar physics;
Official opening of the UCL Academy on 19th
March. Attended by Lucie Green, one of the
Academy Governors.
Louise Harra:
Outreach

Attended the STEM Careers Day at Howard of
Effingham School to discuss careers in space
science with Year 10, 11 and sixth form
students.
Talked to Sutton and Cheam U3A and Eltham
Radio Club on the effect of space weather on
radio signals around the Earth.
Contributed a piece to the online science blog
“Things We Don't Know”
http://www.thingswedontknow.com entitled “The
Sun's Bubble” on the heliosphere. This blog
site, in general, aims to “[...] increase public
awareness of current research, and
simultaneously provide valuable services to
those searching for doctoral opportunities,
joined the "Meeting Engineers” outreach
activity at the Thomas Hardye secondary
school in Dorchester for the third time. It is a biannual outreach activity one year out of phase
with "Meeting Scientists”, 25 March.
Media Broadcasts and Features
Andrew Coates interviews:

Sunday Times on comets, Pan-Starrs and
Rosetta, appeared 17 March;
5



BBC Radio 4 Today programme on Jupiter and
Mars exploration, 16 March;
Sky News on Mars exploration (mentioned
ExoMars), 22 April;
Sky News on ISS coolant leak (mentioned
ExoMars), and on al Jazeera, 10 May.
Lucie Green interviews:

SLOOH broadcast discussing the partial lunar
eclipse

Radio 4 programme on Space Weather

Sky at Night programmes on observing the
winter sky

Sky at Night programme on meteorite
and with Annie Wellbrock:

Sky at Night programme on Saturn
Other News Items/Activities
In January, Colin Forsyth and Andrew Fazakerley
attended the second meeting of the ISSI
International Team studying multi-spacecraft
observations of auroral acceleration processes.
This team is being led Colin and will have it’s final
meeting later this year.
Acknowledgements
The PoleCATS team would like to thank Alan
Smith for his support and the workshops for their
help with design and assembly throughout the
project.
Next Issue
The next issue of The Newsletter (Volume 11,
Issue 1) will be published in September 2013. This
will cover activities from 1 June 2013 to 31 August
2013.
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