November 17, 2023
Though billions of stars exist in the universe, only the one at the center of our solar system plays a unique role for us here on Earth. The Sun provides light and heat, controls the seasons and ocean currents, stirs up the atmosphere, and gives energy to most life.
But the Sun also affects us in less obvious ways. The energetic particles it emits can disrupt radio communications. Its coronal mass ejections can interact with the Earth's magnetic field to trigger power outages by inducing high voltage fluctuations in the power grid. Knowing how to combat these potentially damaging disruptions and understanding the solar events that cause them is crucial for scientific, social, and economic reasons.
Two bold flagship space missions are on their way to better understand how our Sun works: NASA's Parker Solar Probe (Parker), launched in 2018, and Solar Orbiter, a mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, launched in 2020. Parker is venturing closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft to answer long-standing questions, e.g., how the solar wind and energetic particles are accelerated and transported throughout our solar system. In April 2021, Parker crossed over into the solar atmosphere for the first time in history, breaking one of the last frontiers of solar system exploration. Solar Orbiter performed its first close solar flyby at 0.32 au in March 2022, taking the closest-ever images of the Sun while measuring the composition of the solar wind to establish the causal connection between the Sun and the bubble of the heliosphere.
The two engaging speakers lead the Solar Orbiter and Parker missions. They will describe the firsts of each mission and draw connections between the new observations from each mission and how what we are learning from them impacts our daily lives here on Earth.
Moderator Dr. Jason Kalirai is the Mission Area Executive for Civil Space at Johns Hopkins APL. He leads the implementation of innovative and cost-effective solutions to critical civil space challenges by developing space science missions, instruments, and research and technology programs.
Dr. Nour E. Raouafi is a Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory senior scientist. He holds a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Paris XI, France. His professional career spread over several international research institutions, i.e., the Observatory of Turin, Italy (2001); the Max-Planck Institute for Solar System Research (2002-2005); and the National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona (2005-2008). In 2008, he joined the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland(2008-present) to work on the Parker Solar Probe mission. He served as the Deputy Project Scientist of Parker Solar Probe in 2017 and became the mission's Project Scientist in 2018. Dr. Raouafi's research spreads over a wide range of solar and heliospheric areas, emphasizing the dynamic solar corona. He contributed to diverse research areas, e.g., solar magnetic fields, spectroscopy, polarimetry, coronal plumes and jets, CMEs and coronal shock waves, solar wind, solar energetic particles, and cometary physics. He authored nearly two hundred peer-reviewed and conference articles.
Dr. Daniel Müller is the Project Scientist of the ESA-NASA Solar Orbiter Mission and senior staff scientist at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC). Daniel Müller holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Freiburg, Germany. After a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Oslo, Norway, he joined ESA’s SOHO team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he became Deputy Project Scientist of the ESA-NASA SOHO mission. In 2010, he moved to ESTEC to start working on Solar Orbiter and has been serving as the mission’s Project Scientist since 2012. In addition to his scientific and project management work, he has a strong interest in high-performance scientific data visualization. In particular, he is coordinating the development of the open-source software JHelioviewer and is the ESA Lead of the ESA-NASA Helioviewer Project.