“A year in the life of a former ACES student” (or “computational tools used in the space sciences”)

This talk will give a rough chronological summary of space science computational tools I’ve used in the past year as I’ve transitioned from an ACES student at BU to a new position at The Aerospace Corporation. I will first describe observations of low-energy space plasma and fields, and the widely adopted formalism for understanding them, magnetohydrodynamics. In this regime simulations have proven effective in characterizing the large-scale morphology and dynamics of the Earth’s magnetosphere, and I will use examples from my thesis to support this view.

After finishing my degree and a experiencing a few other life-changing events, I took a position with The Aerospace Corporation in Chantilly, Virginia. I will briefly describe the high-energy environment of the Van Allen radiation belts in the inner magnetosphere, the effects that the space environment has on spacecraft and highlight what Aerospace is doing to mitigate these effects. Finally, I will describe one particular project that I’ve contributed to while at Aerospace, for which I was well positioned due to my ACES computational training.