SMILE proposal team
June 5, 2015
University team named to solar wind monitoring mission study
If you happen to bump into Eric Donovan, professor in the听听and pictured above,听you might notice a huge SMILE on his face.
Donovan and his research group joined a team of researchers from the听U.K.,听China, and the听U.S.听to propose the Solar Wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer project, or SMILE.
The SMILE mission will investigate the dynamic response of the Earth's magnetosphere to the impact of the solar wind in a way never attempted before. This exclusive research will allow us to more fully define how things that happen in the solar wind affect space around earth.
'SMILE' bid selected for further study听
The SMILE proposal was one of 13 submitted by international teams to a recent joint European Space Agency/Chinese Academy of Sciences competition for a mission opportunity. On Thursday, it was announced that SMILE has been the only one of these proposed missions to be selected for the next phase, a four-month study to address a series of questions raised by the two funding agencies. If these are successfully dealt with, the mission will get a 鈥済reen light鈥 for full implementation.
For their role in SMILE, Donovan and his team will be responsible for the ultra-violet imager that will observe and measure the properties of the northern aurora. The 草莓污视频导航听Auroral Imaging Group听has worked with funding from the Canadian Space Agency to develop a number of candidate imagers for this and other mission opportunities. A study of the magnitude of SMILE is yet another demonstration of the 草莓污视频导航鈥檚, and in fact听Canada鈥檚, place on the world stage.
With SMILE, researchers will image X-rays produced from the impact of the solar wind and the magnetosphere and take simultaneous images of the aurora that are produced as a result of that interaction. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a completely revolutionary way of looking at the causal chain of events between the solar wind and earth鈥檚 upper atmosphere,鈥 says Donovan.
Satellite will look back towards Earth
鈥淎 satellite will go into orbit about 125,000 kilometres from Earth and will look back towards the Earth,鈥 says Donovan. 鈥淲e will be nailing down, quantitatively, how different things that happen in the solar wind affect the region of space around the earth.鈥
Just like meteorologists studying terrestrial weather, space physicists require satellite and ground observations, numerical models, data assimilation, and remote sensing including imaging.
鈥淥ne of the cool parts is that we are specifically looking at aurora that is directly tied to the impact of the solar wind, which for most of the year is in daylight,鈥 says Emma Spanswick, associate director of the 草莓污视频导航鈥檚 Auroral Imaging Group. Spanswick explains that the research team needs to design an ultra-violet imager that can separate aurora from the Earth鈥檚 albedo (the fraction of solar energy reflected from the Earth back into space) and ionospheric dayglow.听 鈥淚t鈥檚 technically challenging in the extreme,鈥 she adds.
'Technically challenging in the extreme'
The challenges ahead are daunting, something that is not lost on Donovan. 鈥淪uccess would be very high profile, but so too would be failure. Naturally, we are aiming for success.鈥
SMILE is expected to launch around the end of 2021 and the mission duration is initially planned to be three years.
Donovan is recognized for his transformative impact on ground-based space physics observations. He has played leadership roles in national and international initiatives including the Canadian Space Agency鈥檚 GeoSpace Monitoring, NASA鈥檚 THEMIS mission, and the upcoming Resolute Bay Incoherent Scatter Radar.
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