21/07/2010
UK scientists have been awarded £ 3.65m to prepare for the three missions currently competing in ESA's Cosmic
Visions programme. The Space Plasma Group will share in this award through leading the development of the Solar Wind
Analyser (SWA) instrument for Solar Orbiter, lead by Prof. Chris Owen. More details available here.
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14/07/2010
Dr. Colin Forsyth, along with Dr. Lucie Green (MSSL), Dr. David Williams (MSSL) and Dr. Jim Wild (Lancaster), organised
a meeting on The Next Generation of UK Space
Exploration at the RAS. The meeting covered
potential new
missions
in heliophysics (solar physics, solar-terrestrial physics, planetary science). Prof. Chris Owen, Dr. Andrew Fazakerley
and Mr. Dhirren Kataria gave talks on potential upcoming missions to study the dayside magnetosphere and aurora, as
well as opportunities for international collaborations.
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01/07/2010
Dr. Colin Forsyth was interviewed for an article in this month's Sky At Night Magazine on new studies of the aurora
using Cluster.
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04/06/2010
As Principal Investigator of the Solar Wind Analyser Consortium, Prof. Chris Owen attended the Solar Orbiter Programme Readiness Review
at ESA HQ in Paris.
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21/05/2010
Dr. Andrew Fazakerley and Dr. Natasha Doss attended the 19th Cluster Workshop in Poiana Brasov, Romania. The workshop was entitled "Multi-point
Investigations of Magnetosphere - Ionosphere Coupling and Aurora". Dr. Fazakerley gave an invited talk on "Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling of BBFs"
on behalf of Dr. Colin Forsyth, who was unable to attend due to the volcanic ash cloud. Dr. Fazakerley also presented a poster on a potential future
auroral mission on behalf of Prof. Mark Lester (University of Leicester).
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20/05/2010
As Principal Investigator of the Solar Wind Analyser Consortium, Prof. Chris Owen attended a meeting of the Solar Orbiter In Situ Working Group at
ESTEC to discuss the coordinated operation of the relevant package of Solar Orbiter instrumentation.
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16/04/2010
Several members of the Space Plasma Group attended the National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow. Dr. Colin Forsyth, Dr. Andrew Fazakerley and Dr. Andrew
Walsh, along with Dr. Matt Taylor (ESA) and Dr. Elizabeth Lucek (Imperial), organised a session entitled "10 years of Cluster: the Past, Present and
Future of Multi-point Measurements of Space Plasmas". Dr. Fazakerley, along with Dr. Adrian Grocott (Leicester) and Dr. Emma Woodfield (Lancaster),
organised two General MIST sessions. Dr. Forsyth, along with Dr. David Williams and Prof. Louise Harra (MSSL), organised the joint UKSP/MIST Missions
Forum. Kimberley Steed, along with Dr. Jackie Davies, Prof. Richard Harrison and Dr. Chris Davis (RAL), organised a session entitled "Solar Influences
in the Heliosphere".
Oral presentations were given by Roger Duthie, Colin Forsyth and Andrew Walsh. Kimberley Steed gave a poster presentation.
also organised the
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26/03/2010
Dr. Colin Forsyth and Dr. Andrew Walsh attended the 10th International Conference on Substorms in San Luis Obispo, California. Dr. Forsyth
gave an oral presentation entitled "A Statistical Study of Field-aligned Currents in Bursty Bulk Flows Observed by Cluster". Dr Walsh gave
an oral presentation entitled "Ground and Multi-Spacecraft Observations of Substorm Current Wedge Formation and Substorm Development".
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19/03/2010
Dr. Colin Forsyth and Dr. Andrew Walsh visited the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Forsyth
gave a seminar entitled "Multi-spacecraft observations of auroral electron acceleration by Cluster". Dr Walsh gave
an oral presentation entitled "Cluster and Double Star Observations of Magnetotail Transients".
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02/12/2009
As Principal Investigator of the Solar Wind Analyser Consortium, Prof. Chris Owen attended the 3rd Meeting of the Solar
Orbiter Science Working Team at the Paris Observatory.
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30/11/2009
Prof. Chris Owen attended the preparation sessions and the formal presentation of the 6 medium ("M") mission concepts at the
Institut Oceanographique, Paris. These missions were original proposed in 2007 for the first slice of the Cosmic Vision
2015-2025 Plan for the ESA Science Programme and are candidates for a launch in 2017 and 2018. Details of the six mission
concepts (Cross Scale, Euclid, Marco Polo, Plato, Solar Orbiter, SPICA) are available at http://sci.esa.int/cosmicvision.
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27/11/2009
Several members of the space plasma physics group attended the Autumn MIST meeting, held at the Royal Astronomical
Society. Andrew Walsh and Colin Forsyth presented posters on their current work on substorms and bursty bulk
flows. Colin organised the meeting on behalf of the MIST council and Andrew chaired the last session of the day.
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16/11/2009
MSSL hosted a delegation from ESA and members of the Solar Orbiter Mission Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) Consortium (for which
MSSL is the Principal Investigator Institution) for the 'Instrument Development Status Review (IDSR)'. ESA declared the
result of the review as 'successful'.
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09/11/2009
Colin Forsyth gave careers talks to 16-18 year old students at the National Space Centre's CareersFest 2009. The CareersFest
gave aimed to show the students the breadth of opportunities in the UK space technology and research industries.
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15/10/2009
The SPG welcomes Roger Duthie to the group. Roger is a PhD student, supervised by Andrew Fazakerley, who will be investigating
the magnetosphere using data from the Cluster spacecraft.
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15/10/2009
The SPG bids farewell to Sandrine Grimald. Sandrine is leaving us to take up a research position at the CESR in Toulouse. We
wish her all the best in her future endeavours.
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12/10/2009
The SPG welcomes Dr. Yulia Bogdanova to the group. Yulia is working in
the Cluster PEACE Operations Team.
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09/10/2009
Andrew Fazakerley, Colin Forsyth and Andrew Walsh attended the RAS Discussion Meeting on the upcoming SWARM mission, held at
Burlington House. Andrew Fazakerley gave an invited talk on highlights from the Cluster mission, the mission extension and
possible cross-overs between Cluster and SWARM.
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02/10/2009
The Dean of the UCL MAPS Faculty, Professor Richard Catlow visited UCL/MSSL and held discussions with the Academic Staff
Group.
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21/09/2009
Chris Owen, Dhiren Kataria, Barry Hancock and Chris Brockley-Blatt attended and led, as the Principal Investigator team, a
full meeting of the international consortium which will provide the Solar Wind Analyser suite of instruments for Solar
Orbiter. The meeting was held at IFSI, in Frascati, Italy.
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15/09/2009
Chris Owen lectured on 'The Terrestrial Magnetosphere' to the STFC Solar-Terrestrial Physics Summer School held at UCL and
UCL/MSSL, 13-18 September 2009.
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14/09/2009
Colin Forsyth participated in the first meeting of the ISSI International Team on A statistical investigation
into coupled magnetospheric-ionospheric dynamics via multi-scale, multi-instrument, data assimilation.
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14/09/2009
Branislav Mihaljcic, Iryna Rozum and Andrew Walsh attended the Double Star - Cluster workshop and IWT/SWT in
Qingdao, China. Branislav and Iryna gave presentations on the status of the calibration and archiving of data from the PEACE
instruments on Double Star. Andrew presented a case study of a substorm that combines data from both Cluster and Double Star.
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24/08/2009
Andrew Walsh attended the 11th IAGA assembly in Sopron, Hungary and gave an invited talk on "Recent Substorm Results from
Combined Cluster and Double Star Measurements".
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31/08/2009
Chris Owen attended the second meeting of the ISSI International Team on "Advances in understanding of the
structure and
dynamics of magnetic flux transfer at the Earth's magnetopause".
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07/07/2009
Congratulations to (Dr.) Andrew Walsh, who successfully defended his thesis today. Andrew now joins the group as a
post-doctoral researcher.
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22/06/2009
Chris Owen, Kinberley Steed and Chuan Li attended and presented posters at the 12th Solar Wind Conference
in St. Malo, France.
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18/06/2009
Chris Owen and Andrew Fazakerley attended a meeting of the Cross-Scale Science Study Team at ESTEC, which included
presentations of the results of the industrial studies for this mission, which is a candidate mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision
2015-2025 programme.
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25/05/2009
Chris Owen attended the 3rd Solar Orbiter Workshop in Sorrento, Italy. As Principal Investigator of the Solar Orbiter Solar
Wind Analyser (SWA) Suite of instruments, he presented, on behalf of all co-Investigators, a talk entitled 'Solar Wind Plasma
Particles - Solar Origin and In Situ Microstate' which discussed the scientific goals and plans of the consortium. The
workshop website can be found at href='http://solarorbiter3.oato.inaf.it/.
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