GCI M/LT workshop during CEDAR 2022 (student rocket (GHOST) secured)

Dear friends and colleagues,

This is a reminder about the GCI M/LT workshop to be held during the upcoming CEDAR in Austin, TX.

The workshop will be held at the Line Hotel (CEDAR venue) between 6:30 and 8 PM, June 20th. Exact room number is yet not known, but will be advertised in due time.

I will try to organize Zoom or Teams access for those not able to be present. It all depends on the available infrastructure, and links will be posted in the room update email in such case.

Microsoft Teams-meeting (if infrastructure allows)

Join from a computer or mobile app

Click here to attend the meeting

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GCI Mesosphere / Lower Thermosphere (M/LT) aims to study the M/LT region with both new and well proven techniques using a multitude of platforms and instruments. Recent theoretical and modelling developments allow for study of dynamic processes on a large range of scales – including the potential impact of small scale processes on a global scale. The white paper can be downloaded from this link: https://www.grandchallenge.no/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/GCI-MLT-Whitepaper-realease-version-3.1.docx. For those of you who are new to the GCI CUSP and M/LT projects – necessary info is presented here https://www.grandchallenge.no/about-grand-challenge/

The 2022 CEDAR workshop in Austin, TX is coming closer by the day (19 – 24 June 2022), and I think it would be a good idea for us to have a meeting either Monday 20th during that week. As some of you might already know, NASA has agreed to sponsor our proposed student rocket – GHOST, like they did back in 2017 when they handed us the two-stage GCI CUPS student rocket – G-CHASER. G-CHASER was built and integrated through the US RockSat-X program with participation from Capital Tech University, University of Tokyo, Pennsylvania State University. University of Oslo, Arctic University of Norway – Tromsø, University of New Hampshire, University of Puerto Rico, Virginia Tech and West Virginia University. Over 100 students were part of the G-CHASER, and about 50 of them participated both at NASA Wallops Flight Facility for the 1st integration in Agust 2018, and in January 2019 at Andøya Space in Norway for the final integration and launch during the GCI CUSP CAPER-2 launch campaign. This gave them a fantastic experience and loads of new friends and contacts for future endeavors. The launch operations of the G-CHASER was sponsored by Andøya Space.

With GHOST we’re aiming for students from these countries:
USA, Norway, Sweden, Germany, France, Switzerland, Canada, Poland and UK.

In other words, we are talking about students from the countries that are part of the M/LT project, plus those being a part of the ESA EASP project (ESRANGE Andøya Special Project).

One of the items we need to discuss during a possible workshop in June is how to advertise, select proposals and ensure the best possible use of the GHOST. We also need to look at the M/LT status and identify future campaigns that would benefit from being coordinated in time and location etc. We should also look into data sharing. In the CUSP project this is handled by the SIOS at Svalbard who’s hosting all the data (or metadata only) on their servers. This provides us with a solid server setup and a professional front end for collecting/using the data.