CEDAR email: CEDAR/GEM workshop: Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp

[Astrid Maute]

"Grand Challenge Initiative — Cusp” Community Engagement Workshop
           Tuesday, June 21, 1:30-3:30 PM
Workshop conveners: Jøran Moen, U Oslo, Kolbjorn Blix (Norway / ASC), Doug
Rowland, NASA GSFC

This workshop is designed to maximize community involvement and engagement
in a new multinational effort, called the “Grand Challenge Initiative —
Cusp”.

This initiative is an effort to leverage existing investments and
previously selected missions on behalf of the wider scientific community.
It is designed to provide an in-depth examination of the Earth’s magnetic
cusps, particularly cusp electrodynamics, M-I coupling, and I-T response
and dynamics.

So far, the Grand Challenge is comprised of five sounding rocket missions:

TRICE-2 (USA / NASA — PI: Craig Kletzing)
— studying the dynamics of magnetic reconnection in the cusp, and
determining the extent of spatial patchiness vs. temporal burstiness
VISIONS-2 (USA / NASA — PI: Doug Rowland)
— studying ion outflow in the cusp
ICI-5 (Norway, PI: Jøran Moen)  — studying the generation of ionospheric
irregularities in strong shear flows in the cusp
SS-530-3 (Japan / JAXA, PI: Takami Abe)  — ion outflow in the cusp
G-CHASER (multinational, lead: Norway)  — university student rocket (hoping
to recruit interested universities to provide student payloads)

There are opportunities for additional rocket missions, potentially
Japanese, Swedish, German, or additional USA involvement.

In addition to the sounding rocket missions, we are hoping to leverage the
excellent capabilities of the EISCAT and CUTLASS radars, as well as
multiple ground-based optical sites (Kjell Henriksen Observatory among
others).

We hope this workshop will stimulate discussion amongst the GEM and CEDAR
community about other potential efforts which could leverage this large
multinational investment, and work together to dramatically improve our
understanding of cusp dynamics.

This could include complementary space-based observations, ground-based
observations, theory, or modeling efforts.

A website for this initiative, which includes the latest version of the
workshop agenda is located at: http://www.grandchallenge.no/

Potential collaborators who may wish to share their ideas on participation
should email a single power point slide outlining their ideas to Doug
Rowland (douglas.e.rowland at nasa.gov) and we will add you to the agenda.

Of particular interest may be the G-CHASER mission concept, which is
designed to provide a unique and exciting platform for student-led
experiments in support of the Grand Challenge effort. G-CHASER is still
actively recruiting university partners for this effort, led by Kolbjorn
Blix of ASC.

Sincerely,

Doug Rowland, Jøran Moen, Kolbjorn Blix / workshop conveners
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