UCL DEPARTMENT OF SPACE & CLIMATE PHYSICS

Dr. Chris Arridge has commenced a prestigious Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF) in the Planetary Science Group at MSSL and is joined by Dr. Lucie Green (Solar Physics, URF 2012) and Dr. Tom Kitching (Astrophysics, URF 2011). Professor Alan Smith, Director of MSSL said 'We are very proud to host these three exceptional scientists and look forward to working with them in the years to come. They will significantly strengthen our engagement in science exploitation, future missions, outreach and education.'

On Thursday 31 May and Friday 1 June the Planetary science group is hosting the 43rd meeting of the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) team.

ESA's next "large class" (L-class) mission will be a mission called JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer) to study the giant planet Jupiter, its planetary system and magnetosphere, and particularly its moon Ganymede.

Andrew Coates and Tom Nordheim attended the Cassini Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) working group meeting at University of Cologne on 28-30 March.

In a presentation at the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting in Manchester, planetary group PhD student Yudish Ramanjooloo presented his work on using amateur images of comets to infer the properties of the surrounding solar wind. This work was picked up for a media article in Sky at Night online.

Several members of the planetary group are attending the Royal Astronomical Society's National Astronomy Meeting, hosted by the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Manchester, from 27-30 March 2012.

Dr. Gethyn Lewis will attend a consortium meeting of the Spacecraft Plasma Interaction Network of Europe (SPINE) at the European Space Agency's space research and technology centre (ESTEC) in the Netherlands, from 5 - 7 March 2012. The SPINE consortium aims to share resources and coordinate efforts to understand and model the interaction of spacecraft with their space plasma environments, including spacecraft charging. Dr. Lewis has been involved in modelling work using tools (Spacecraft Plasma Interaction System - SPIS) developed by the SPINE consortium to understand the charging of the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn.

Dione is a moon of Saturn, discovered in 1684 by the Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini. Over 300 years later, planetary scientists including Andrew Coates and Geraint Jones from MSSL-UCL, have discovered that Dione has a weak exosphere near its surface (at planets with denser atmospheres, the exosphere is the outermost layer of its atmosphere). This work was featured on BBC News Online and is also the feature of a science nugget on the planetary science group website.

Drs. Geraint Jones, Adam Masters, and Mr Yudish Ramanjooloo are attending the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) at the Moscone Centre in San Francisco, USA.

Dr. Adam Masters from the Planetary Science group has won this year’s Robert Boyd Award for Outstanding Scientific Achievement.

The ScienceWatch website recently interviewed Prof. Andrew Coates for the Featured Interviews section of their website.

Prof. Andrew Coates (PanCam Principal Investigator) and Dr. Craig Leff (PanCam Project Manager) attended the 4th ExoMars Science Working Team meeting at the ESA Research and Technology Centre ESTEC on 13-14 October 2011.

From 3 - 7 October 2011 Prof. Andrew Coates and Dr. Adam Masters attended the joint meeting of the European Planetology Network and the American Astronomical Association's Division of Planetary Sciences.

Dr. Chris Arridge will attend a Uranus workshop in Pasadena, California on 17/18 October 2011. The meeting will focus of the highest priority science questions on Uranus, looking at how these science questions can be addressed by Earth-based and Earth-orbiting observatories and modelling. Dr. Arridge will give a presentation on Uranus’ magnetosphere and the its sources of charged particles.

Professor Andrew Coates and Dr Gethyn Lewis will attend the Cassini CAPS team meeting in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA on 22 and 23 September 2011. Dr Lewis will give an update on the current status of the CAPS/ELS instrument and Professor Coates will give presentations on Saturn's largest moon Titan.

Andrew Coates will attend the ESA-sponsored Mars Advanced Summer School in Weihai China in September 2011. He will give lectures on the interaction between the Solar Wind and the atmosphere of Mars.

The planetary group have been spending the past few weeks developing our new website and this was launched on Friday 9 September 2011. We hope users of our previous site will enjoy our new site and that new visitors will be interested in reading about the activities of our group. Queries about the website can be directed to the web editor, Chris Arridge, by email at csa [a t] mssl.ucl.ac.uk.