Susan Lepri

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Susan Lepri is an American space scientist and is currently Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan. [1] She led development of portions of the Heavy Ion Sensor (HIS) which was launched onboard the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission in February 2020. [2] She has been director of the University of Michigan Space Physics Research Laboratory (SPRL) since 2021.

Contents

Background and scientific career

Lepri was born and raised in Michigan and studied for her undergraduate in Physics, Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Michigan. She subsequently pursued her PhD in Atmospheric and Space Sciences at the University of Michigan. [1] After 7.5 years as a research scientist, she was promoted to Associate Professor in 2013. In 2021 she became Director of the Space Physics Research Laboratory at University of Michigan, [3] [4] [5] and was promoted to Full Professor later that same year.

In 2018, Lepri was awarded the Claudia Joan Alexander Trailblazer award for innovation in STEM curricula. [6]

Research interests

Lepri's primary scientific interest is in the measurement and study of heavy ions in the solar wind to reveal the physics of the solar wind and coronal mass ejections. [7] [8] To this end, she has developed space-based ion mass spectrometers, most recently portions of the Heavy Ion Sensor (HIS) onboard the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter mission. [2]  HIS has made the first ever measurements of the chemical composition of the solar wind in the inner heliosphere. She has also developed instrumentation as part of the technology development opportunity for NASA's upcoming Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). [1]

Lepri has also used models and observations of heavy ions in the solar wind to infer conditions in the local interstellar medium. [9] [10] [11]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar wind</span> Stream of charged particles from the Sun

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun, called the corona. This plasma mostly consists of electrons, protons and alpha particles with kinetic energy between 0.5 and 10 keV. The composition of the solar wind plasma also includes a mixture of materials found in the solar plasma: trace amounts of heavy ions and atomic nuclei such as C, N, O, Ne, Mg, Si, S, and Fe. There are also rarer traces of some other nuclei and isotopes such as P, Ti, Cr, 54Fe and 56Fe, and 58Ni, 60Ni, and 62Ni. Superposed with the solar-wind plasma is the interplanetary magnetic field. The solar wind varies in density, temperature and speed over time and over solar latitude and longitude. Its particles can escape the Sun's gravity because of their high energy resulting from the high temperature of the corona, which in turn is a result of the coronal magnetic field. The boundary separating the corona from the solar wind is called the Alfvén surface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar and Heliospheric Observatory</span> European space observatory

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is a European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft built by a European industrial consortium led by Matra Marconi Space that was launched on a Lockheed Martin Atlas IIAS launch vehicle on 2 December 1995, to study the Sun. It has also discovered over 4,000 comets. It began normal operations in May 1996. It is a joint project between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. SOHO was part of the International Solar Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP). Originally planned as a two-year mission, SOHO continues to operate after over 25 years in space; the mission has been extended until the end of 2025, subject to review and confirmation by ESA's Science Programme Committee.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Advanced Composition Explorer</span> NASA satellite of the Explorer program

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solar Orbiter</span> European space-based solar observatory

The Solar Orbiter (SolO) is a Sun-observing satellite developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). SolO, designed to obtain detailed measurements of the inner heliosphere and the nascent solar wind, will also perform close observations of the polar regions of the Sun which is difficult to do from Earth. These observations are important in investigating how the Sun creates and controls its heliosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">STEREO</span> Solar observation mission

STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched in 2006 into orbits around the Sun that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth. This enabled stereoscopic imaging of the Sun and solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claudia Alexander</span> American geophysicist and planetary scientist

Claudia Joan Alexander was a Canadian-born American research scientist specializing in geophysics and planetary science. She worked for the United States Geological Survey and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was the last project manager of NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter and until the time of her death had served as project manager and scientist of NASA's role in the European-led Rosetta mission to study Comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C/NOFS</span>

C/NOFS, or Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System was an USAF satellite developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate to investigate and forecast scintillations in the Earth's ionosphere. It was launched by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus-XL launch vehicle at 17:02:48 UTC on 16 April 2008 and decayed on 28 November 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MAVEN</span> NASA Mars orbiter

MAVEN is an American spacecraft orbiting Mars to study the loss of its atmospheric gases to space, providing insight into the history of the planet's climate and water. The spacecraft name is an acronym for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution" and also a word that means "a person who has special knowledge or experience; an expert". MAVEN was launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on 18 November 2013 UTC and went into orbit around Mars on 22 September 2014 UTC. The mission is the first by NASA to study the Mars atmosphere. The probe is analyzing the planet's upper atmosphere and ionosphere to examine how and at what rate the solar wind is stripping away volatile compounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parker Solar Probe</span> NASA robotic space probe of the outer corona of the Sun

The Parker Solar Probe is a NASA space probe launched in 2018 with the mission of making observations of the outer corona of the Sun. It will approach to within 9.86 solar radii from the center of the Sun, and by 2025 will travel, at closest approach, as fast as 690,000 km/h (430,000 mph), or 0.064% the speed of light. It is the fastest object ever built.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aditya-L1</span> Space mission to Sun

Aditya L1 is a planned coronagraphy spacecraft to study solar atmosphere, currently being designed and developed by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and various other Indian research institutes. It will be inserted in a halo orbit around the L1 point between Earth and Sun where it will study solar atmosphere, solar magnetic storms and its impact on environment around Earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Heliophysics Science Division</span>

The Heliophysics Science Division of the Goddard Space Flight Center (NASA) conducts research on the Sun, its extended Solar System environment, and interactions of Earth, other planets, small bodies, and interstellar gas with the heliosphere. Division research also encompasses geospace—Earth's uppermost atmosphere, the ionosphere, and the magnetosphere—and the changing environmental conditions throughout the coupled heliosphere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David J. McComas</span>

David John McComas is an American space plasma physicist, Vice President for Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and leads the Space Physics at Princeton Group at Princeton University. He had been Assistant Vice President for Space Science and Engineering at the Southwest Research Institute, Adjoint Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), and was the founding director of the Center for Space Science and Exploration 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 2014 COSPAR Space Science Award and the NASA Exceptional Public Service Medal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMILE (spacecraft)</span> Chinese–European satellite studying Earths magnetosphere

Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer (SMILE) is a planned joint venture mission between the European Space Agency and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. SMILE will image for the first time the magnetosphere of the Sun in soft X-rays and UV during up to 40 hours per orbit, improving our understanding of the dynamic interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetosphere. The prime science questions of the SMILE mission are

ESA Vigil, formerly known as Lagrange, is a planned solar weather mission by the European Space Agency. It envisions two spacecraft to be positioned at Lagrangian points L1 and L5.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SWEAP</span>

SWEAP is an instrument on the unmanned space probe to the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe. The spacecraft with SWEAP on board was launched by a Delta IV Heavy on 12 August 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. SWEAP includes two types of instruments, the Solar Probe Cup (SPC) and Solar Probe Analyzers (SPAN). SWEAP has four sensors overall, and is designed to take measurements of the Solar wind including electrons and ions of hydrogen (protons) and helium.

Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) is a future mission by NASA to study the unexplored region from the middle of the solar corona out to 1 AU from the Sun. PUNCH will consist of a constellation of four microsatellites that through continuous 3D deep-field imaging, will observe the corona and heliosphere as elements of a single, connected system. The four microsatellites were initially scheduled to be launched in October 2023, but they have since been moved to an April 2025 launch in rideshare with SPHEREx.

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."

Antoinette (Toni) Galvin is space physicist at the University of New Hampshire. She is known for her research on the solar wind.

Kelly Korreck is an American space scientist. She is currently an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and Program Scientist at NASA as head of operations for the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) instrument aboard the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Susan Lepri | U-M LSA Applied Physics Program". lsa.umich.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  2. 1 2 Lepri, Susan T.; Livi, Stefano A.; Raines, Jim M.; Galvin, Antoinette B.; Kistler, Lynn M.; Dewey, Ryan M.; Alterman, Benjamin L.; Allegrini, Frederic; Collier, Michael R.; Owen, Christopher J. (2021-03-03). "Updates and Early Results from the Heavy Ion Sensor on Solar Orbiter". EGU General Assembly Conference Abstracts. Bibcode:2021EGUGA..2312435L. doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu21-12435. S2CID   238001220.
  3. ↑ "Team – XTRM Labs/Space Physics Research Laboratory". xtrm-sprl.engin.umich.edu. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  4. ↑ "Answers Inc. - A brief history of U-M's Space Physics Research Laboratory". Engineering Research News. 2021-07-26. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  5. ↑ Jesse, David. "From Ann Arbor to space, U-M lab celebrating 75 years of missions". Detroit Free Press. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  6. ↑ "Willie Hobbs Moore Awards – U-M Women in Science and Engineering" . Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  7. ↑ "Susan T. Lepri". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  8. ↑ Lepri, S. T.; Zurbuchen, T. H.; Fisk, L. A.; Richardson, I. G.; Cane, H. V.; Gloeckler, G. (2001-12-01). "Iron charge distribution as an identifier of interplanetary coronal mass ejections". Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics. 106 (A12): 29231–29238. Bibcode:2001JGR...10629231L. doi:10.1029/2001JA000014. S2CID   122004851.
  9. ↑ Galeazzi, M.; Chiao, M.; Collier, M. R.; Cravens, T.; Koutroumpa, D.; Kuntz, K. D.; Lallement, R.; Lepri, S. T.; McCammon, D.; Morgan, K.; Porter, F. S. (August 2014). "The origin of the local 1/4-keV X-ray flux in both charge exchange and a hot bubble". Nature. 512 (7513): 171–173. arXiv: 1407.7539 . Bibcode:2014Natur.512..171G. doi:10.1038/nature13525. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   25079321. S2CID   4446789.
  10. ↑ "X-Ray Glow Evidence of Local Hot Bubble". Sky & Telescope. 2014-07-28. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
  11. ↑ "Evidence for Supernovas Near Earth | Science Mission Directorate". science.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2022-06-11.
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