CEDAR email: Arecibo Observatory Colloquium: Oct. 15, EXPLORING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN EARTH & SPACE WITH ICON

[Jens Lautenbach]

Dear CEDAR community,

The Arecibo Observatory colloquium series presents on October 15, 2019 2:00PM (AST) the talk "EXPLORING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN EARTH & SPACE WITH ICON" by Dr. Scott England. The colloquium will be streamed by Zoom (https://zoom.us/j/901225113) or join by phone: +1 929 436 2866,
conference ID: 901-225-113. Further information can be found at the Colloquium Series Website<http://www.naic.edu/ao/colloquium-series>.

Abstract:
The near-Earth space environment is far from empty. Occupying the region where astronauts and low-earth-orbiting spacecraft fly is a the last, most tenuous portion of our atmosphere. Sunlight breaks apart the molecules of gas at these altitudes, creating exotic and corrosive species such as atomic oxygen, as well as charged ions and electrons. Spacecraft and astronauts flying in this region experience impacts from all of these in the form of atmospheric drag, which modifies the orbits of low-flying spacecraft, surface corrosion and electrostatic charging, and impacts on radio communications. Understanding this region has proved challenging as it is highly variable, difficult to access, and feels the influence of both the sun and processes occurring much lower in our atmosphere. With the serendipitous development of multiple new spaceflight missions designed to study this region, a rare opportunity to solve significant outstanding problems in space physics has presented itself. One of these is the upcoming ICON mission will observe the thermosphere using optical and in-situ instruments from low-Earth-orbit. Combining these observations effectively with ground-based observations and numerical models to address questions of ion-neutral coupling and upper-atmosphere dynamics will require collaboration between many research groups around the world. This seminar will focus on the science and observations of the ICON mission and the opportunities they present.

Best regards,

Dr. Jens Lautenbach
Observatory Scientist

Arecibo Observatory - University of Central Florida
Space & Atmospheric Sciences
HC-3 BOX 53995
Arecibo, Puerto Rico 00612


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