Publications by authors named "John Wygant"

Article Synopsis
  • - The Van Allen Probes mission used a distributed operational model where the Mission Operations Center (MOC) managed overall tasks while individual instrument-specific Science Operations Centers (SOCs) focused on data acquisition, processing, and instrument performance for their specific instruments.
  • - Significant collaboration between the instrument SOCs and the project science team led to crucial discoveries through coordinated observations and cross-calibration of instruments during the mission.
  • - Key lessons learned emphasized the value of having dedicated SOCs, which improved the quality and timeliness of instrument data for scientists studying magnetospheric and radiation belt phenomena.
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Geomagnetic storms are large space weather events with potentially tremendous societal implications. During these storms, the transfer of energy from the solar wind into geospace is largely increased, leading to enhanced energy flow and deposition within the magnetosphere and ionosphere. While various energy forms participate, the rate of total Alfvén wave energy flowing into the auroral acceleration region-where the magnetosphere and ionosphere couple-has not been quantified.

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Substorms generally inject tens to hundreds of keV electrons, but intense substorm electric fields have been shown to inject MeV electrons as well. An intriguing question is whether such MeVelectron injections can populate the outer radiation belt. Here we present observations of a substorm injection of MeV electrons into the inner magnetosphere.

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Using the Helium Oxygen Proton Electron (HOPE) and Electric Field and Waves (EFW) instruments from the Van Allen Probes, we explored the relationship between electron energy fluxes in the eV and keV ranges and spacecraft surface charging. We present statistical results on spacecraft charging within geosynchronous orbit by L and MLT. An algorithm to extract the H charging line in the HOPE instrument data was developed to better explore intense charging events.

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