ICON at AGU Fall Meeting

Online 1-17 December 2020

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AGU logoThe AGU Fall Meeting will be one of the world's largest virtual scientific conferences, with exciting programming and events. #AGU20 is scheduled from 1-17 December. Scientific program content will be available on-demand, with pre-recorded oral presentations and virtual posters available for attendees to view and peruse outside of the scheduled live Q&A sessions during the meeting.

Click "read more" to see a PDF of ICON science-related sessions, posters, and the SPA Town Hall on Wednesday night, Dec. 9.

 

ICON had a better year than most of us

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Clearly the solution to the challenges of 2020 is to be in space, far above earthly problems. We’re celebrating one year since our launch on October 10, and – once past the electrical grid shutdowns that made launch challenging -- ICON has had a pretty rewarding year. Mission operations have gone smoothly, overcoming all challenges that have come up, and implementing a lot of calibration activities to enhance the science mission. Our instruments have gotten great data which are now available to the public. A number of ICON-related articles have gone to press or are heading there shortly, see our publications. We’re looking forward to Fall AGU to share our science results with a broad audience.

First ICON Science Data Released to Public

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[by Lina Tran on the NASA blog] On June 22, NASA’s ICON team released scientific data collected during the spacecraft’s first eight months in orbit to the public.

The data release features observations from ICON’s four instruments — MIGHTI, FUV, EUV, and IVM — which have been observing the ins and outs of the ionosphere, the sea of charged particles high in the upper atmosphere. Scientists have been busy parsing the wealth of observations collected by ICON in preparation for the mission’s first science results, which will be released later this year.

“ICON was designed, built, and launched to provide data we had never seen before, and it has not disappointed us in any regard,” said Thomas Immel, ICON principal investigator at University of California, Berkeley. Immel said he was pleased to share ICON’s first data with the world. “The sensitivity and precision of our observations, and the unique orbit and mission design, give us a new and advanced tool for unlocking all the puzzling questions we have had about the connection between Earth’s atmosphere and our space environment.”

The release coincides with the virtual summer meeting of CEDAR, the Coupling, Energetics, and Dynamics of Atmospheric Regions program. The newly released data spans measurements made since the mission’s launch on Oct. 10, 2019. Data can be accessed through University of California Berkeley’s Space Sciences Lab.

ICON first results to be featured at virtual CEDAR Meeting June 22-26

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The CEDAR 2020 annual face-to-face conference has been cancelled due to COVID-19, but a two-day virtual conference will take place June 22-26. It will include a National Science Foundation town hall, student workshop, pre-recorded presentations and individual workshops.

ICON results will be featured in its own data introduction and tutorial session and in several more of these workshops, including those focused on Thermospheric Winds, Model Systems Engineering and Coordinated Ground and Space-Based observations.   

The agenda for the CEDAR meeting is here.

The evolving list of workshops can be found here. http://cedarweb.vsp.ucar.edu/wiki/index.php/2020_Workshop:workshoplist

Register here at no cost to be included in the mailing list.

Newly-Launched ICON Observatory Sees the December 2019 Eclipse

What happens when airglow is temporarily “turned off”?

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Just over six weeks after launch and early calibrations, NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission was presented with a unique opportunity. ICON flew very close to the December 26 solar eclipse track that extended across Asia, and observed the major changes in upper atmospheric airglow that naturally occurred. ICON’s four instruments, primed to look at the ionosphere, the dynamic region where Earth meets space, were in position to observe the effects. What happens when airglow –the natural glow of Earth’s atmosphere caused by solar radiation – is temporarily “turned off” when the sun is blocked by the moon’s shadow for a few minutes? Preliminary data shows that all four instruments – MIGHTI, EUV, FUV and IVM – were able to see changes the eclipse wrought.

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ICON skin is based on Greytness by Adammer
Background image, courtesy of NASA, is a derivitave of photograph taken by D. Pettit from the ISS, used under Creative Commons license