IACG to Support Science Coordination of Space
Physics Missions for Solar Maximum
The Inter-Agency Consultative Group (IACG) is comprised of key
delegates from the European Space Agency (ESA), the Russian Space
Agency (RSA), the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
(ISAS) of Japan, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA). The IACG's main objective is to take advantage of and
greatly enhance the scientific return from their fleet of current
and upcoming solar-terrestrial spacecraft. In early October the
IACG met at the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in
Bern Switzerland and approved several important recommendations
from it Space Physics Working Group.
The IACG approved the extension, through the upcoming solar maximum
period, the following Campaigns:
- Campaign 1 - Magnetotail Energy Flow, Storage and Release
- Campaign 2 - Boundaries in Collisionless Plasmas
- Campaign 3 - Solar Events and their Manifestation in
Interplanetary Space
The current fleet of IACG missions currently used to support these
campaigns include: Wind, Polar, Geotail, Interball, SOHO, ACE, and
other missions and ground-based facilities. This set of
capabilities will be augmented with several new agency missions
such as IMAGE and Cluster II during the solar maximum (launch in
early and mid-2000 respectively) and future correlative work should
take full advantage of these current and new agency missions.
Other Recommendations:
- It was also noted that the IACG Campaign 4 (Solar Sources of
Heliospheric Structures out of the Ecliptic) had been completed
with the first full heliocentric orbit of Ulysses. The associated
science accomplishments point to a new series of interesting
physical questions that can be addressed in the future regarding
the transition between small-scale coronal fields and large-scale
heliospheric fields, especially in the origin of "open" solar
magnetic fields. Since Ulysses was now still near the ecliptic, the IACG accepted
the recommendation that new Heliospheric Science in Campaign 4
again be taken up after a pause of one year.
- The solar observatory spacecraft of the present generation
(Yohkoh, SOHO, TRACE, Coronas-I) and other heliospheric spacecraft
(e.g. Ulysses) have generated an enormous volume of data relating
to flares, CMEs and other forms of solar activity, and the quiet
sun. The IACG's Space Science Working Group felt that the time was
ripe to conduct a major workshop/review activity, analogous to the
Skylab workshop series, to help guide the scientific productivity
of the new generation of observatories (HESSI and SOLAR-B plus
ground-based facilities). Based on this, the IACG will endorse an
upcoming Science Workshop in this area.
- With the upcoming era of solar maximum, it was recognized that
renewed scientific emphasis will be devoted to the study of the
dynamical properties of the Radiation Belts which are greatly
affected by substorms, geomagnetic storms, and shock encounters of
the magnetosphere. The evolving orbit of Polar, IMAGE, the
recently selected IMEX mission of NASA, and other IACG projects
will provide new fundamental observations in support of the renewed
approach to the physics of trapped radiation. The IACG's Space
Physics Working Group requested and received the IACG's endorsement
of the recent COSPAR initiative to promote the archiving of high
resolution energetic particle data as a part of WG-2 efforts to
deepen the understanding of the physical processes leading to the
formation of Radiation Belts and acceleration of trapped radiation.
- And finally, the IACG assigned ISSI to manage the IACG web site
(currently managed by GSFC at http://iacg.org/) and therein to
maintain information on the process of its campaigns principal
scientific results, and an associated bibliography of relevant
publications.
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