Allison Jaynes, Ph.D. - US grants

This award supports the travel of two University of Iowa (UI) undergraduate students and two UI faculty lecturers to attend an international undergraduate student sounding rocket field school called CaNoRock that is a week-long workshop based upon collaboration between the Andoya Space Center and seven Canadian and Norwegian Universities. The two UI professors will participate in the development of the geospace curriculum at the Andoya Rocket Range by teaching regular classes and helping to support the student rocket experiment preparations. In addition to these lectures, the workshop would focus upon hands-on student rocket activities to help train students while introducing them to the possibilities of graduate study or the prospects of a career in the aerospace industry. The primary project objectives are aimed at increasing awareness of US educational opportunities for space research activities and experimental rocket research. Eventually, it is expected that this collaboration would be developed into a more extensive activity that would include participation by students from other US educational institutions.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Early career faculty and graduate students from the University of Iowa will attend and participate in the international Canada-Norway Rocket Science Training and Educational Program. This is a PhD summer school focused on data analysis from space-based and ground-based instruments with the aim of uncovering features of scientific significance within the data set. The faculty members will teach part of the course material and gather feedback from the students. They will assess the feasibility of hosting a similar school at the University of Iowa in tandem with the international school.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

Energetic precipitation that rains down on the atmosphere from space is known to cause a whole host of space weather effects, including damage to low-Earth orbiting spacecraft, location signal disruptions, and danger to trans-polar aircraft and passengers. Additionally, the atmospheric effects of nitric oxides from particle precipitation play a role in our understanding of weather and climate - a topic that is particularly relevant right now. The linkage between space and climate is not well-known. This study aims to investigate this link directly by analyzing data from spacecraft, ground-based instrumentation, and using atmospheric modeling to uncover the cause and effect of particle precipitation on the atmosphere and climate. This proposal involves graduate student training and participation by several early- and mid-career researchers who will benefit from the collaboration in a new direction. Furthermore, the team plans to host a short, virtual seminar series to be advertised to the full community that will illuminate this science topic, highlight the interdisciplinary nature of the work, and discuss new findings.<br/><br/>Energetic particle precipitation (EPP) is both a cause and a consequence of a myriad different processes throughout geospace. It is the result of loss mechanisms that occur throughout the inner magnetosphere, contributing to global dynamics of the trapped radiation belt and ring current particle populations. It is also the cause of several effects on the Earth's upper and middle atmosphere, as the energy deposited to these regions create changes in chemical constituents. As such, EPP is a process that crosses the traditionally-defined boundaries between space science and earth science, and has wide-ranging implications on both systems. The research project aims to advance the frontiers of our knowledge on the drivers and effects of EPP on the coupled magnetosphere-atmosphere system. In summary, this project is to quantify the loss that occurs in the magnetospheric particle population through ground- and space-based observations and use that information to assess the effects of that precipitation on the Earth's atmosphere using whole atmosphere modeling. This approach will allow us to advance understanding of this process within the context of the space science and atmospheric science fields.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.