POLAR Telecon Agenda for December 2nd, 2005
Agenda:
0. Upcoming Polar Telecons
1. Operations:
2. MFE Data Processing Status
3. Senior Review Proposal
4. Resident Archives
5. E/PO
6. SEPS Science Report
0. Upcoming Polar Telecons
Friday, December 2nd, 2005
4 pm ET, 3 pm CT, 2 pm MT, 1 pm PT
PIs and their designated representatives will be telephoned at their
usual numbers.
Other participants may call in at:
1-888-946-4717, password POLAR TELECON
(Leader: John Sigwarth)
The web site for the final agenda will be:
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2005Dec02/
Future Polar Telecons
Friday January 27th, 2006
Future Telecon Science Discussion Schedule
[Errors/omissions/preferences to: nicola.fox@jhuapl.edu]
January 2006: UVI
February 2006: MDI
March 2006: CAMMICE
April 2006: PWI
May 2006: VIS
June 2006: EFI
July 2006: TIMAS
August 2006: Hydra
September 2006: MFE
October 2006: CEPPAD
November 2006: TIDE
December 2006, PIXIE
January 2007, SEPS
1. Operations
If you have any concerns about Polar operations, please contact Nicky
Fox (nicola.fox@jhuapl.edu)
Sun Angle Maneuver
The Polar team successfully executed Attitude Adjust Maneuver #7 on
November 16, 2005. The commands to start the maneuver were on time at 15:59:51z
and the FOT verified 508 pulses. The spin rate after the maneuver was within
range at 9.995 RPM. The current sun
angle is ~92.7 degrees.
The next Polar maneuver is tentatively scheduled for 02/07/2006.
Change of POC for the Polar FOT
Mark Carder has recently moved to the GLAST program and therefore will
not longer be supporting the Polar mission. I am sure that we would all like to
thank him for his service with Polar and wish him well in his new endeavor.
Please continue to direct all future FOT related enquiries to Mike
Machado. His telephone number is 301-286-0666 and his email,
mmachado@pop500.gsfc.nasa.gov.
If the matter relates to the spacecraft directly, please continue to
contact Steve Hearn at 301-286-0665 (shearn@pop400.gsfc.nasa.gov)
2. MFE Data Processing Status
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2005Dec02/PolarMFEreport_2005_Dec1.pdf
3. The 2006 Senior Review Proposal
The final version of the proposal can be found at: http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/senior_review/2005/
The presentation on November 14th went extremely well. Our
presenter was Terry Onsager who did an outstanding
job both with the preparation of the materials and the presentation itself. We
would like to thank everyone who assisted Terry with their efforts. Among the items raised by the panel were budgetary
questions relating to carry forward funding, the ending of the mission in March
2007 due to running out of fuel for attitude keeping, and the need to do the
measurements now with Polar while the other assets of the S3C Great
Observatory are available. Also there
were questions on the specifics of the plasma measurements in the reconnection
layers and the three-dimensional capabilities of the high energy particle
instruments to observe the radiation belts with Polar in the ecliptic normal
attitude. These questions clearly showed
the interest of the panel in the proposed Polar science. The result of the senior review is scheduled
to be announced in February and is timed to the announcement of the President’s
budget.
4. Resident Archives
NASA/HQ has indicated that there may be a small amount of funding
available for after the end of mission for the maintenance of Resident Archives
of the data at the PI institutions. This
would provide a small amount of money for maintaining the hardware that serves
up data and a fraction of an FTE to keep the hardware working. Chuck Holmes will be asking for input from
the Polar mission in the form of a short white paper.
Please be prepared for a discussion on what the individual instrument
Polar Resident Archives should take.
Talking points for discussion:
1. The
resident archives are to be distributed at the PI institutions or their
designated locations where the expertise in handling the specific data
resides. (GSFC is not to be the sole
repository for all of the data).
2.
Maximal support might be of order 1/4 FTE (i.e., ~$50 K plus hardware
maintenance)
3. The
archives should provide the highest possible resolution (spatial and temporal).
4. The
data should be available without human intervention.
5. The
archive should provide dynamic access to virtual observatories.
6.
Every site should provide direct links with brief descriptions of every
other Polar site.
7.
Every archive should allow ASCII downloads of low and high resolution
data for replotting by the requestor.
8. Every site should allow plots of the data,
either previously made or mae
on demand
9.
Positional and attitude information for the Polar spacecraft should be
provided at one or more sites.
5. E/PO
Recently a new popular science text book has been released
called What’s Out There? In essence What's Out There? is
a guide of 212 seminal astronomical images edited and designed to display the
majesty of space phenomena with scientifically sound explanations. It has been published simultaneously in 8
languages plus English this fall (October/November) by Duncan Baird Ltd in
London and New York. The book's introduction is written by Stephen Hawking.
Link to the cover:
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2005Dec02/lwrz.jpg
Over the past year, astronomers and planetary scientists
like CFHT's Jean-Charles Cuillandre,
NOAO's Travis Rector, NRAO's
Jay Lockman, GSFC's Charles
Bennett (WMAP), JHU/APL's Nicola Fox, Karel Schrijver & Zoe Frank
(TRACE), AFRL's Stephen Price (MSX), Royal Swedish
Academy of Science's Mats Lofdahl & Dan Kiselman, 2MASS's Michael Skrutskie,
AAO's David Malin and many
others have helped with the book ‹ even Apollo 12's Alan Bean and Shuttle
astronaut-astrophysicist, Loren Acton (Yohkoh) as
well as "advanced" amateur astro-photographers
like Fred Espenak, Stefan Seip,
and Bill & Sally Fletcher.
The book can be ordered from Amazon.com for $19.77 and is available in
all major bookstores. To see the excerpt containing the VIS image of the
aurora, rendered by Rob Barnes (JHU/APL), click here:
..you will need to click on “next page” 5
times to get to the correct place.
Nicky Fox provided original text and editing for the aurora, corona,
coronal loops, chromosphere, coronal mass ejections,
solar cycle, and solar winds.
So far the book has received 5 star ratings and is currently the number
471 book ordered from Amazon. This has dropped from 132 when it was first
released and immediately was on back order. When you consider the genre of this
book and its more limited audience – this really is quite an achievement
6. SEPS Science Report at
http://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/polar/telecons/2005Dec02/SEPS/
