Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP)

The number of rockets and satellites launched into space has rapidly increased since the late 2010’s as a response to the expanding interest in both the commercial and government opportunties available in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). The year 2021 saw the number of rockets launched into space break the record set in 1967 during the height of the space race, while a GAO report on satellite megaconstellations released in 2023 estimated that the number of satellites present in LEO will balloon from present day numbers of roughly 6,000 to over 60,000 individual units by 2040.

Mars famously has two ice caps, one at each pole, and two volatiles: carbon dioxide and water. Additionally, at both poles, seasonal ice deposits in the winter darkness and sublimates throughout the spring to expose the residual ice and the polar layered deposits. Investigations of the properties of the ice caps through remote sensing has led to the identification of possible climate signatures, and laboratory investigations of ice properties in Martian conditions can help explain some of the puzzling properties that we observe.

NASA science missions are often complex systems of systems, involving various stakeholders, including the United States’ Congress. To ensure a clear and concise communication of expectations, requirements, and constraints, NASA has adopted the Science Traceability Matrix (STM). STM provides a logical flow from the decadal survey to science goals and objectives, mission and instrument requirements, and data products. STM serves as a summary of what science will be achieved and how it will be achieved, with a clear definition of what mission success will look like.

The Moon offers multiple types of resources. It is a scientific resource, an exploration resource, and also a commercial resource. The Moon is a cornerstone for multiple science disciplines, not just lunar; it can help us learn how to effectively explore further into the Solar System with humans and robots, and it can enable commercial activities that support science and exploration. Intuitive Machines has conducted two lunar surface missions, including the first commercial landing in February 2024.

We have developed a new cloud model, CARMA Cloud, for the NCAR Community Earth System Model that is designed to simplify the cloud model and improve its representation of cloud aerosol interactions. Rapid, unexpected, global warming since 2003 seems to be due to a combination of cloud feedback to global warming and strong response to aerosol changes. While the model is currently aimed at terrestrial cloud physics, the basic code has recently been used for exo-planet studies, and an early version of the model was used for studies of Martian ice clouds.

While photophoresis, or “light-driven motion,” has long explained how aerosol layers remain aloft in the middle atmosphere, practical applications have only recently been gaining attention. Advances in nanofabrication now allow us to build lightweight structures that can propel themselves upward using photophoretic forces alone. These “photophoretic flyers” can sustain flight in near-space (30–100 km altitudes), a region that is too high for aircraft and balloons and too low for satellites.

Abstract: Weakened magnetic braking (WMB) was originally proposed in 2016 to explain anomalously rapid rotation in old field stars observed by the Kepler mission. The proximate cause was suggested to be a transition in magnetic morphology from larger to smaller spatial scales. In a series of papers over the past five years, we have collected spectropolarimetric measurements to constrain the large-scale magnetic fields for a sample of stars spanning this transition, including a range of spectral types from late F to early K.

Abstract: Magnetic reconnection in asymmetric environments such as the solar corona and Earth’s magnetosphere exhibits distinct particle acceleration behavior compared to symmetric cases, due to differences in plasma density and magnetic field across the current sheet. Using 3D hybrid and particle-in-cell simulations, we explore how this asymmetry influences particle acceleration. We find that increasing asymmetry leads to a systematic reduction in particle acceleration efficiency.

Planetary magnetospheres provide natural laboratories for the study of space plasmas, and Jupiter’s magnetosphere in particular acts as a bridge between those phenomena we can study in detail at Earth, and those beyond the solar system that we can only glimpse through telescopes. Jupiter’s auroras have been studied for many years with increasing sensitivity and resolution, but the James Webb Space Telescope offers a revolutionary perspective of these spectacular emissions.