Professor Theodore A. Fritz conducts an experimental program in space plasma
physics involved with the study of energetic charged particles and the ionic
composition of these particles in the magnetospheres of planets with
an emphasis here at Earth.
An aspect of this program consists of providing hardware for spaceflight as part of the payloads of scientific satellites and rockets. This hardware related program involves the design, fabrication, testing, particle beam calibrations, response simulation and integration of these scientific instruments primarily on NASA scientific satellites and sounding rockets. Present efforts include the NASA Global Geospace Science [GGS] POLAR satellite and the joint NASA/European Space Agency International Solar Terrestrial Physics [ISTP] CLUSTER set of four satellites. On February 24, 1996 the Polar satellite was successfully placed in a 1.8 Earth Radii by 9 Earth Radii orbit with apogee over the Earth's northern polar region. An extensive data reduction and analysis program is underway with the launch of Polar. On June 4, 1996 the four CLUSTER satellites were destroyed when the Ariane 5 rocket exploded shortly after lift off from the launch complex at Kourou French Guiana. Efforts to prepare the flight space spacecraft and instruments for a launch in the Spring/Summer of 1997 are presently underway. Data are also being analyzed from an energetic electron spectrometer flown into a pulsating aurora on a sounding rocket (PULSAUR II) from northern Norway in February of 1994.
Another aspect of this program involves the analysis of data from existing
energetic particle, plasma, and magnetic field satellite data sets. Active
efforts to preserve and examine data from instruments on satellites ATS-6,
ISEE1&2, CRRES,
NOAA/TIROS-N,
and INJUN 3 are underway. With the arrival of the GALILEO
spacecraft and probe at Jupiter in December 1995, the
Energetic Particle Detector (T. Fritz, Co-Investigator) is
providing an exciting data set for study from that planet's massive
magnetosphere.
The archives of much of this data, and persons of the Energetic Particle
Group, can be found on spacedata.bu.edu.
Office: CAS 501
E-Mail: fritz@buasta.bu.edu
Phone: 617-353-7446
Vita