A bit of filling in the gaps: My last post to this blog was almost a full decade ago. Since then, I've been focused primarily on data and instrumentation for large satellite missions. But I left a piece of my heart in rockets, and I always wanted to get back to them someday. Academic positions come with a lot of autonomy - yes, must bring in money, must write papers, etc. but in what form, on what topic; that's for me to decide. The current rocket mission, LAMP (Loss through Auroral Microburst Precipitation), is a collaboration between my grad advisor, my grad colleague (slash amazing friend for many years), myself and a few other institutions. The development and launch was delayed a couple years in a row; first, due to an extended government shutdown (anyone remember that one? 2018-2019?), then some kind of global pandemic freakout, I'm not too sure on the details, maybe you've heard of it? And so a 2019 launch became a 2021/2022 launch. Here we are.
In the meantime, I've gotten into some other rocket and CubeSat missions. More about that some other time, perhaps. But now - in first quarter 2022 - finally - the LAMP launch is a real thing.
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| LAMP mission logo by my grad student, Riley Troyer |
Super high-level overview: LAMP is designed to study a type of aurora called pulsating aurora, which has been so charmingly described by science writer Thomas Mallon as "thin, luminous gruel" (The Last Rocket Club). In a 180-degree overhead view, it normally looks like large splotches of paint across the sky that pulse with some frequency - patches that turn on and off at the same time or different times than neighboring patches. See the faster-than-realtime video example below.
Pulsating aurora from MOOSE camera (courtesy of Marilia Samara and Robert Michele, NASA GSFC)
Our understanding of what causes this kind of aurora has evolved over the last few decades. We've seen several breakthrough observational studies since ~2010 that have unambiguously shown a certain type of plasma wave to be responsible for dumping these electrons into the atmosphere. That type of wave exhibits quasi-periodic structures that can be distributed slightly differently in regions of equatorial space, giving this patchy appearance to the aurora as regions of waves dump particles in a regular cadence that is not identical to neighboring regions. Think of a turbulent ocean, with a multitude of waves appearing and disappearing in various patches. What happens out in equatorial space, out in Earth's magnetosphere, connects to what we see in the sky overhead via magnetic field lines that guide particles getting dumped into the atmosphere by these waves. This figure is a decent schematic of the process:
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| Jaynes 2018, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01669-z |
Why do I care? Why does anyone care? Good questions. In this case, I care because I think pulsating aurora, and related precipitation, constitutes a significant or dominant fraction of the energy transfer from the magnetosphere to the atmosphere. Possibly more on this later --- but in general, this energy can cause a chain reaction that affects local levels of ozone and other chemical constituents in Earth's atmosphere. I think we're still fairly lacking in our understanding of this connection, but that's okay - it makes it an exciting topic to explore. Pulsating aurora contains higher energies (even higher than we used to think) than more frequently studied aurora and it's quite ubiquitous - meaning there's a lot of potential for major energy transfer. My entire NSF CAREER award is based on gaining deeper insights into the cause and morphology of pulsating aurora.
To prepare for the LAMP mission, Sarah Jones and I and several colleagues and students traveled to Alaska in January 2020 to test ground instrumentation. More about those adventures next time. And then... very soon... preparation and travel to the field for the launch!
