This three-part – Dartmouth College, UAF/GI, SRI – collaborative effort on auroral system science explores new data infrastructure design and development through the auroral-system-science use of a specific auroral observational campaign. Swarm-over-Poker 2023 provided the opportunity to collect in situ ionospheric current and flow data from the ESA Swarm spacecraft, during nightly conjunctions with Poker Flat Research Range (PFRR), Alaska, from mid-February through the end of March, 2023. The PFRR data include filtered auroral imagery, Poker Flat Incoherent Scatter Radar (PFISR) radar data, ground magnetometry, and additional instrumentation.(fig. 1: Swarm-Over-Poker project poster by Alexander Mule et. al.
fig. 2: ESA-Swarm in situ conjunctions with PFRR Digital All Sky Camera (DASC) ground images: (overlay) field-aligned current (blue) and cross-track flow velocity (orange) of the ionospheric plasma; (image) a three-color mapped DASC auroral image of the event at 0835 UT. [UAF/GI Optics, 2023, Swarm, 2023])
ARCS
ARCS explored the processes that contribute to aurora at size scales that have been rarely studied: at the intermediate scale between the smaller, local phenomena leading directly to the visible aurora and the larger, global dynamics of the space weather system coursing through the ionosphere and thermosphere. The mission used an innovative, distributed set of sensors by deploying 32 CubeSats and 32 ground-based observatories.
From NASA
