蜜桃传媒破解版下载

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蜜桃传媒破解版下载 researcher earns NASA grant to study how space weather affects Earth

Yang Wang


A polar tongue of ionization during a geomagnetic storm stretching from lower latitudes up over Canada, Greenland, and northern Europe and Asia.*

Yang Wang is leading a unique study harnessing satellite data to study how solar activity affects a poorly understood region of Earth鈥檚 upper atmosphere.

Wang, a visiting faculty member in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences and a 2021 graduate of 蜜桃传媒破解版下载 aerospace PhD program, has earned a $699,018, four-year

鈥淚鈥檓 going to be studying the responses of the Earth鈥檚 ionosphere to solar activities, particularly in the polar regions,鈥 Wang said. 鈥淭hey are very complicated, coupled processes and are not very well modeled or understood.鈥

The ionosphere stretches from 48-965 km (30-600 mi) above Earth鈥檚 surface. Conditions in it are influenced by space weather, including solar flares and other activity from the sun.

Wang is focused specifically on phenomena called 鈥減olar patches and tongues of ionization,鈥 where plasma in the ionosphere stretches out thousands of miles beyond its normal locations. When this occurs, steep electron density gradients can cause disruptions in satellite navigation and communications systems.

A major obstacle in improving our understanding is the difficulty in collecting data. Many studies of space weather analyze how radio signals from global navigation satellite system (GNSS) satellites pass through the ionosphere before reaching ground-receiving stations. At Earth鈥檚 poles, however, it is very difficult to deploy and maintain GNSS receivers.

Wang has discovered a new way to collect the data. GNSS signals beamed to Earth鈥檚 surface also bounce back up after hitting the ground and reflect into space, where they can be received by other satellites.

A constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbits are already collecting this reflected signal information as part of unrelated research, and NASA makes data available to researchers.

鈥淚t鈥檚 really exciting to observe the ionosphere in this way,鈥 Wang said. 鈥淭he hardware systems aren鈥檛 designed to do this, so there are some limitations, but this could help us understand what鈥檚 going on at high latitudes.鈥

Wang is developing algorithms to conduct processing and analysis of that data to ferret out new useful information from noise.

鈥淲e want to better understand the physical processes in the space environment from the sun to the Earth and advance our understanding of how these polar patches form, evolve, and propagate,鈥 he said.

The grant represents a special validation for Wang; it is the first proposal he submitted as a PhD graduate and will enable his research for the next four years.

鈥淭o have my proposal be reviewed by NASA and be recognized, I鈥檓 very happy,鈥 Wang said.


*Polar Tongue of Ionization rendering by under听Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.