The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $515,885 Project Grant under the Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) to The Regents of the University of Colorado, doing business as the University of Colorado's Office of Contracts and Grants Division. The grant will support a 3-year research project to investigate the inward transport and energy-dependent penetration of energetic electrons (10s of keV to multi-MeV) from the Earth's outer radiation belt into the inner radiation belt. The research...
The Regents of the University of Colorado received a $432,033 Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences under the Geosciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.050). The grant will fund research from June 1, 2023 through May 31, 2026 to quantify the contribution of off-equatorial ultra-low frequency waves on radial diffusion in Earth's radiation belts. Specifically, the University will use satellite data from THEMIS, Van Allen Probes,...
This $324,438 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation's Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) will fund a collaborative research effort to determine how the plasmapause, the outer boundary of the Earth's plasmasphere, controls radiation belt enhancements. The research aims to systematically evaluate the long-term behavior of radiation belt enhancements and conduct in-depth case studies to assess how the plasmapause influences these events, which can pose hazards to space exploration...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences awarded a $682,313 Project Grant to the Space Science Institute, a nonprofit research organization based in Boulder, Colorado. The grant, funded through the NSF Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050), will support research to determine whether the solar wind electron strahl acts as a seed population for the Earth's electron radiation belt, and to identify the controlling factors for this process. The project aims to...
The Regents of the University of California, doing business as the University of California, Berkeley, was awarded a $518,204 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation on April 1, 2021 to support research titled "RAPID RADIATION BELT SCATTERING IN ELECTROMAGNETIC TURBULENCE." The research is being conducted under the NSF's Geosciences program (CFDA #47.050), which aims to expand fundamental knowledge and understanding of the integrated Earth system through basic research in...
This Project Grant award of $182,965 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Geosciences Program (CFDA 47.050) supports research on plasma waves in the Earth's magnetosphere. The project, titled "The Evolution of Magnetospheric Plasma Waves in Response to Solar Driving," aims to utilize multi-mission data to characterize the drivers, structure, and effects of these waves, which can accelerate electrons and impact atmospheric chemistry. As part of the effort, the project will also...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Geosciences program Project Grant awarded to Auburn University totals $149,131 and runs from February 1, 2024 to January 31, 2029. The grant focuses on understanding the dynamics of energetic electron "fast, deep injections" into the Earth's inner radiation belt, which can impact spacecraft operations. Key objectives include: 1) investigating the characteristics of 100s of keV electron injections and their relation to solar wind/geomagnetic...
This National Science Foundation Project Grant of $250,059 supports research at the University of California, Los Angeles from April 1, 2022 to March 31, 2024. The research aims to advance understanding and prediction of the Van Allen radiation belts through a novel combination of machine learning and data assimilation methods. Specifically, the Principal Investigator will use the Versatile Electron Radiation Belt model and data assimilation to discover generalized Fokker-Planck equations...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences awarded a $407,336 Project Grant to the Regents of the University of Colorado, a U.S. state government entity and institution of higher learning, under the NSF's Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050). The funding will support data-driven modeling to study the day-to-day and longitudinal variability of the equatorial electrojet, a critical electrodynamic feature of the low- and mid-latitude ionosphere. Key...
This $590,898 National Science Foundation award under the Geosciences program (CFDA 47.050) will fund research into modeling chorus wave generation using particle-in-cell simulations. Led by New Mexico Consortium, the project aims to study chorus waves—commonly observed plasma waves in Earth's inner magnetosphere—through large-scale first-principles simulations. The simulations will use realistic magnetic field topology and plasma parameters from observations to test existing theories of...