Publications by authors named "R M Skoug"

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.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We describe a new data product combining the spin-averaged electron flux measurements from the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) Energetic Particle Composition and Thermal Plasma (ECT) suite on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Van Allen Probes. We describe the methodology used to combine each of the data sets and produce a consistent set of spectra for September 2013 to the present. Three-minute-averaged flux spectra are provided spanning energies from 15 eV up to 20 MeV.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The prediction of a supersonic solar wind was first confirmed by spacecraft near Earth and later by spacecraft at heliocentric distances as small as 62 solar radii. These missions showed that plasma accelerates as it emerges from the corona, aided by unidentified processes that transport energy outwards from the Sun before depositing it in the wind. Alfvénic fluctuations are a promising candidate for such a process because they are seen in the corona and solar wind and contain considerable energy.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The two full precessions in local time completed by the Van Allen Probes enable global specification of the near-equatorial inner magnetosphere plasma environment. Observations by the Helium-Oxygen-Proton-Electron (HOPE) mass spectrometers provide detailed insight into the global spatial distribution of electrons, H, He, and O. Near-equatorial omnidirectional fluxes and abundance ratios at energies 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

We present observations of the radiation belts from the Helium Oxygen Proton Electron and Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer particle detectors on the Van Allen Probes satellites that illustrate the energy dependence and L shell dependence of radiation belt enhancements and decays. We survey events in 2013 and analyze an event on 1 March in more detail. The observations show the following: (a) at all L shells, lower energy electrons are enhanced more often than higher energies; (b) events that fill the slot region are more common at lower energies; (c) enhancements of electrons in the inner zone are more common at lower energies; and (d) even when events do not fully fill the slot region, enhancements at lower energies tend to extend to lower L shells than higher energies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF