David John McComas | |
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Born | May 22, 1958 66) Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S. | (age
Alma mater | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S.) University of California, Los Angeles (M.S., Ph.D.) |
Occupation(s) | Professor of Astrophysics sciences,space physicist, senior executive |
Known for | space scientist and Principal Investigator of multiple space missions |
David John McComas (born May 22, 1958) is an American space physicist, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences, and leads the Space Physics at Princeton Group at Princeton University. He was the Princeton University Vice President for the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) from 2016 - 2024 and previously Assistant Vice President for Space Science and Engineering at the Southwest Research Institute, Adjoint Professor [1] of Physics at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and was the founding director of the Center for Space Science and Exploration [2] at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is noted for his extensive accomplishments in experimental space plasma physics, including leading instruments and missions to study the heliosphere and solar wind: IMAP, IBEX, TWINS, Ulysses/SWOOPS, ACE/SWEPAM, and Parker Solar Probe. He received the National Academy of Science's 2023 Arctowski Medal, European Geosciences Union 2022 Hannes Alfven Medal, SCOSTEP 2022 Distinguished Scientist Award, a NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal in 2015, the 2014 COSPAR Space Science Award, and the American Geophysical Union 1993 Macelwane Medal.
McComas was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His father, Harold McComas, was a World War II Veteran, who went to college and law school through the GI Bill. His mother, Hazelyn McComas, nee Melconian, was the descendant of Armenian/Lebanese refugees who fled the genocide from Beirut to Ellis Island. McComas is severely dyslexic, and didn’t start to learn how to read until the 4th grade. He discussed his dyslexia in childhood and how it led him to space science in a 2014 talk entitled “A Personal Journey from “Slow” to the interstellar Frontier.” McComas received his undergraduate degree in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Geophysics and Space Physics from University of California, Los Angeles in 1985 and 1986. He began his space physics career in 1980 with early development work on the SWOOPS instrument at the Los Alamos National Laboratory for the NASA / ESA Ulysses joint space mission. He moved to SwRI, in San Antonio, Texas, in 2000 and Princeton University in 2016.
McComas holds seven patents [3] and is author of over 800 scientific and technical papers in the refereed literature, spanning topics in heliospheric, magnetospheric, solar, and planetary science as well as space instrumentation and mission development. Together these have garnered over 50,000 citations. [4]
McComas is Principal Investigator of NASA's Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) and TWINS (Two Wide-Angle Imaging Neutral-atom Spectrometers) missions, as well as the Parker Solar Probe – Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun [5] instrument suite (ISOIS), and the Ulysses Solar Wind Plasma Investigation (SWOOPS) instrument. He is lead co-investigator for the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) Solar Wind Electron, Proton, Alpha Monitor [6] (SWEPAM), and Solar Wind Around Pluto [7] (SWAP) instrument on New Horizons.
McComas is also co-investigator on the JUNO mission and led the design and development of the Jovian Auroral Distribution Experiment (JADE) Instrument and is co-investigator on the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS), Cassini-Huygens Plasma Spectrometer [8] (CAPS), GENESIS [9] discovery mission, POLAR Thermal Ion Dynamics Experiment (TIDE), [10] and IMAGE Midsized Explorer. At Los Alamos he was also principal investigator for a series of Magnetospheric Plasma Analyzers [11] (MPAs) in geosynchronous orbit.
McComas serves on the PPPL Board of Directors and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) Science Associates Board of Directors He recently served on the National Academies' Space Science Board (SSB) and Committee on Increasing Diversity and Inclusion in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions. He was previously a member of the NASA Advisory Council (NAC 2013 - 2015) and served and then chaired the NAC Science Committee (2010 - 2015). [12] He chaired NASA's Solar Probe Science and Technology Definition Team [13] (2003 -2008), NASA's Sun-Earth Connections Advisory Subcommittee (SECAS) 2000–2003, and J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee [14] (1997-1999).
McComas also previously served on the advisory committee for the Scobee Education Center at San Antonio College and on the board of directors of the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee and of the Dyslexic Advantage, [15] a non-profit focused on the strengths of the dyslexic mind.
The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is a research organization at the University of Colorado Boulder. LASP is a research institute with over one hundred research scientists ranging in fields from solar influences, to Earth's and other planetary atmospherics processes, space weather, space plasma and dusty plasma physics. LASP has advanced technical capabilities specializing in designing, building, and operating spacecraft and spacecraft instruments.
Advanced Composition Explorer is a NASA Explorer program satellite and space exploration mission to study matter comprising energetic particles from the solar wind, the interplanetary medium, and other sources.
The heliosphere is the magnetosphere, astrosphere, and outermost atmospheric layer of the Sun. It takes the shape of a vast, tailed bubble-like region of space. In plasma physics terms, it is the cavity formed by the Sun in the surrounding interstellar medium. The "bubble" of the heliosphere is continuously "inflated" by plasma originating from the Sun, known as the solar wind. Outside the heliosphere, this solar plasma gives way to the interstellar plasma permeating the Milky Way. As part of the interplanetary magnetic field, the heliosphere shields the Solar System from significant amounts of cosmic ionizing radiation; uncharged gamma rays are, however, not affected. Its name was likely coined by Alexander J. Dessler, who is credited with the first use of the word in the scientific literature in 1967. The scientific study of the heliosphere is heliophysics, which includes space weather and space climate.
Eugene Newman Parker was an American solar and plasma physicist. In the 1950s he proposed the existence of the solar wind and that the magnetic field in the outer Solar System would be in the shape of a Parker spiral, predictions that were later confirmed by spacecraft measurements. In 1987, Parker proposed the existence of nanoflares, a leading candidate to explain the coronal heating problem.
The Global Geospace Science (GGS) Wind satellite is a NASA science spacecraft designed to study radio waves and plasma that occur in the solar wind and in the Earth's magnetosphere. It was launched on 1 November 1994, at 09:31:00 UTC, from launch pad LC-17B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Merritt Island, Florida, aboard a McDonnell Douglas Delta II 7925-10 rocket. Wind was designed and manufactured by Martin Marietta Astro Space Division in East Windsor Township, New Jersey. The satellite is a spin-stabilized cylindrical satellite with a diameter of 2.4 m and a height of 1.8 m.
Interstellar Boundary Explorer is a NASA satellite in Earth orbit that uses energetic neutral atoms (ENAs) to image the interaction region between the Solar System and interstellar space. The mission is part of NASA's Small Explorer program and was launched with a Pegasus-XL launch vehicle on 19 October 2008.
The Russian Space Research Institute is the leading organization of the Russian Academy of Sciences on space exploration to benefit fundamental science. It was formerly known as the Space Research Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences. It is usually known by the shorter name Space Research Institute and especially by the initialism IKI.
Venera-D is a proposed Russian space mission to Venus that would include an orbiter and a lander to be launched in 2029. The orbiter's prime objective is to perform observations with the use of a radar. The lander, based on the Venera design, would be capable of operating for a long duration on the planet's surface. The "D" in Venera-D stands for "dolgozhivuschaya," which means "long lasting" in Russian.
The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission is a NASA robotic space mission to study the Earth's magnetosphere, using four identical spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation. The spacecraft were launched on 13 March 2015 at 02:44 UTC. The mission is designed to gather information about the microphysics of magnetic reconnection, energetic particle acceleration, and turbulence — processes that occur in many astrophysical plasmas. As of March 2020, the MMS spacecraft has enough fuel to remain operational until 2040.
Marcia Neugebauer is an American geophysicist who made contributions to space physics. Neugebauer's research was among the first that yielded the first direct measurements of the solar wind and shed light on its physics and interaction with comets.
Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) imaging is a technology used to create global images of otherwise invisible phenomena in the magnetospheres of planets and throughout the heliosphere.
Louis John Lanzerotti is an American physicist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor of physics in the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark, New Jersey.
Jovian Auroral Distributions Experiment (JADE) is an instrument that detects and measures ions and electrons around the spacecraft. It is a suite of detectors on the Juno Jupiter orbiter. JADE includes JADE-E, JADE-I, and the EBox. JADE-E and JADE-I are sensors that are spread out on the spacecraft, and the EBox is located inside the Juno Radiation Vault. EBox stands for Electronics Box. JADE-E is for detecting electrons from 0.1 to 100 keV, and there are three JADE-E sensors on Juno. JADE-I is for detecting ions from 5 eV to 50 keV. It is designed to return data in situ on Jupiter's auroral region and magnetospheric plasmas, by observing electrons and ions in this region. It is primarily focused on Jupiter, but it was turned on in January 2016 while still en route to study inter-planetary space.
Alexander J. Dessler was an American space scientist known for conceiving the term heliosphere and for founding the first Space Science Department in the United States.
The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe(IMAP) is a heliophysics mission that will simultaneously investigate two important and coupled science topics in the heliosphere: the acceleration of energetic particles and interaction of the solar wind with the local interstellar medium. These science topics are coupled because particles accelerated in the inner heliosphere play crucial roles in the outer heliospheric interaction. In 2018, NASA selected a team led by David J. McComas of Princeton University to implement the mission, which is currently scheduled to launch on 29 April 2025. IMAP will be a Sun-tracking spin-stabilized satellite in orbit about the Sun–Earth L1 Lagrange point with a science payload of ten instruments. IMAP will also continuously broadcast real-time in-situ data that can be used for space weather prediction.
NASA's Solar Terrestrial Probes program (STP) is a series of missions focused on studying the Sun-Earth system. It is part of NASA's Heliophysics Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate.
Pluto Energetic Particle Spectrometer Science Investigation (PEPSSI), is an instrument on the New Horizons space probe to Pluto and beyond, it is designed to measure ions and electrons. Specifically, it is focused on measuring ions escaping from the atmosphere of Pluto during the 2015 flyby. It is one of seven major scientific instruments aboard the spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched in 2006, flew by Jupiter the following year, and went onto flyby Pluto in 2015 where PEPSSI was able to record and transmit back to Earth its planned data collections.
Plasma Wave Subsystem, abbreviated PWS, is an instrument that is on board the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 unmanned probes of the Voyager program. The device is 16 channel step frequency receiver and a low-frequency waveform receiver that can measure electron density. The PWS uses the two long antenna in a V-shape on the spacecraft, which are also used by another instrument on the spacecraft. The instrument recorded data about the Solar System's gas giants, and about the outer reaches of the Heliosphere, and beyond. In the 2010s, the PWS was used to play the "sounds of interstellar space" as the spacecraft can sample the local interstellar medium after they departed the Sun's heliosphere. The heliosphere is a region essentially under the influence of the Sun's solar wind, rather than the local interstellar environment, and is another way of understanding the Solar System in comparison to the objects gravitationally bound around Earth's Sun.
Janet G. Luhmann is an American physicist and senior fellow of the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California, Berkeley. She has made major contributions to a wide range of topics in planetary, solar, magnetospheric, and heliospheric physics. She is the principal investigator of the IMPACT instrument suite on the twin-spacecraft STEREO mission. IMPACT stands for In-situ Measurements of Particles and Coronal mass ejection (CME) Transients. It consists of a, "suite of seven instruments that samples the 3-D distribution of solar wind plasma electrons, the characteristics of the solar energetic particle (SEP) ions and electrons, and the local vector magnetic field."
Michelle F. Thomsen is space physicist known for her research on the magnetospheres of Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn.