POLAR PI NEWSLETTER  July 2004


POLAR TELECON: Friday July 9, 2004 4 pm EDT, 3 pm CDT, 2 pm MDT, 1 pm PDT
PIs will be telephoned at their usual numbers
Other participants may call in at: 1-800-988-0215, password POLAR TELECON
(Leader: John Sigwarth)

Agenda

1. Budget
2. Operations
Eclipse Season Operations

3. Next Polar Science Team Meeting
4. Candidate science topics for Senior Review proposal
5. E/PO Update
6. Science Discussion: PWI

The web site for the final agenda will be:

http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2004Jul09/

Tentative CY04 Science Discussions

[Errors/omissions/preferences to: john.b.sigwarth@nasa.gov

Jul 2004:  PWI

Aug 2004:  MDI

Sep 2004:  CAMMICE

Oct 2004:  VIS

Nov 2004:  EFI

Dec 2004: TIMAS

Jan 2004:  HYDRA

Feb 2005:  MFE

Mar 2005:  CEPPAD

Apr 2005:  TIDE

May 2005:  PIXIE

June 2005:  SEPS

July 2005:  UVI

Future Polar Telecons (tentative dates)

Friday, August 27, 2004
Friday, September 30, 2004


Budget

Most of the instrument teams should have received their full funding authorization levels for FY2004.  The last funding authorization is nearing completion in the GSFC accounting system.  Please verify that you have received your full funding for FY2004 at your institution.  If you have not, send an email to john.b.sigwarth@nasa.gov. We will continue to push on the system on our end to expedite this process.

All of the PI grants are in the final year of the three year grant cycle. NASA regulations require that new proposals be submitted and new grant numbers assigned. Please check the end date of your grant with your accounting personnel and contact John Sigwarth at john.b.sigwarth@nasa.gov so that we can be sure the records are correct at both ends. Two months prior to your grant end date, I will need a final report for your grant. At the same time I will need a 3 year proposal including science and costs for continuing the research into the future. These proposals can be used as our launching point for the upcoming senior review. It is likely that only missions with extremely lean operating and data analysis costs will have any possibility of surviving the next senior review.

Eclipse Season Operations

The Fall eclipse season begins August 26, 2004 and ends September 14, 2004.  The longest eclipses are 124 minutes.  Eclipses longer than ~ 90 minutes cause deep discharges of the spacecraft batteries.  Consequently, power will need to be conserved during this 3-week period. 

Under normal operating conditions, the spacecraft load sheds if the battery voltage drops below 19.2 V.  In previous Fall eclipse seasons, the load shed was disabled and power was conserved by powering down all or some of most instruments.  The Polar spacecraft can continue to operate on battery voltages as low as 18.4 V.  This fall in addition, spacecraft contact schedules during this time period will be impacted by the return and recovery operations for the Genesis program.  This could lead to a contact gap of 17 to 23 hours as currently scheduled.  Consequently the load shed may need to be left enabled for spacecraft safety. 

For this eclipse season the priority order for turn off is: 

CAMMICE/MICS Main Power off

PIXIE Main Power off

SEPS Main Power off

PWI Main Power off (during all shadow periods)

CAMMICE HIT Main Power off

VIS HV off

TIDE HV off

TIMAS HV off

CEPPAD off

HYDRA HV off

If you have any concerns about this operating procedure, please contact Nicky Fox (nicola.fox@jhuapl.edu) as soon as possible.

Sun Angle Maneuver and Plan

The next Polar spacecraft maneuver is planned for November 10, 2004.  Scheduling including the necessary Deep Space Network (DSN) time for that maneuver is going on now.  We know that the small gradient drift in the attitude of Polar is not well modeled currently and it is hoped that a longer baseline of sun and horizon sensor data acquired in the ecliptic normal attitude will allow for correction for this drift.

Next Polar Science Team Meeting

The call for the next Senior Review is expected to be released in November of 2004. In order that we are able to respond to this call, it will be advantageous if we can meet as a group soon after the release. The University of California, Berkeley has agreed to host the meeting and have suggested that we schedule two days immediately before or after AGU to lessen the travel burden on the teams. The AGU meeting is scheduled for December 13-17, 2004 (Monday-Friday) so this would mean a weekend meeting. Comments are solicited.

New Candidate Science for the Senior Review 2005

Coordinated Studies With the Groundbased Component of THEMIS.

The groundbased component of THEMIS will be deployed and tested in 2005 well before the THEMIS launch.  This comprehensive northern hemisphere network along with POLAR and its new high bit-rate telemetry mode for in-situ measurements will be used to compare the field aligned current systems detected at higher altitudes with the ionospheric currents and auroral structures seen by the THEMIS ground-based measurements in the winters of 2005-2006 and 2006 to 2007. Thus the Polar-THEMIS synergy will allow important scientific study while validating the THEMIS ground-based component prior to the THEMIS launch.

Radiation Belts During the Declining Phase of the Solar Cycle.

It is known that the radiation belts behave differently during the declining phase of a solar cycle.  In early 2005 and continuing through 2007, the Polar orbit will be ideally situated to cross through all zones of the radiation belts again through this declining phase of the solar cycle and continuing down to solar minimum.  The long baseline of Polar measurements will be an invaluable resource for radiation belt modelers for the next half decade.

Coordinated High Time Resolution Observations of the Cusp

Polar in conjunction with Cluster can be used to resolve spatial-temporal ambiguities in the cusp.  With Polar in its high bit rate telemetry mode for in-situ measurements, details of the cusp not accessible before will now be observed.  In addition, Polar can get a second look with higher temporal resolution at the high energy particles in the cusp.  The origin of these high energy particles has been the subject of considerable controversy.

Education and Public Outreach Update

The Best of Polar DVD is progressing rapidly and most of the animations and visuals have been created with the exception of the "sounds of the magnetosphere" piece. The on-camera interviews were completed in April and the sound-bites are selected. A number of PI teams have been assisting with this effort and we appreciate any help that you have given to the team. You can see some of the new animations at http://superdarn.jhuapl.edu/share/nicky/polar_dvd



SCOSTEP Climate and Weather of the Sun-Earth System CAWSES

The Polar mission supported the 1st CAWSES space weather campaign, which ran in association with the campaign of CPEA (Coupling Processes in Equatorial Atmosphere) and the ISR World Days in March 29-April 3 2004. The focus of the campaign is the coupling between the high- and low-latitude ionospheres. These campaigns are briefly described at http://www.haystack.edu/schedules/worldays_2004.html

You should make every effort to ensure that your data are processed in a timely manner as we will be setting up a web page in support of this campaign. Please contact Nicky Fox (nicola.fox@jhuapl.edu) with relevant information about your data.

Science Discussion:   PWI

Choose either the powerpoint presentation

or if you are using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer you can choose the web version.

The web version does not work with Netscape 7.1.

The PWI Science presentation can be found at http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2004Jul09/pwi/