-  At the time of the Sputnik I launch on October 4, 1957, Sardi Parthasarathy (now Perot Systems, supporting codes 672 and 690.1) was a young radio astronomer in New Delhi working on ionospheric radio emissions. At that time, a Soviet embassy attache in New Delhi asked Sardi to monitor 20 MHz transmissions at selected times. Sardi heard and reported hearing those "beep-beep-beep" sounds announcing the start of the space age on some of the passes, beginning with the second pass.

-  D. Aaron Roberts (672) presented an invited talk in the Space Science colloquium series at the University of Maryland, College Park on 17 September 2007. The talk was entitled "The Complexity of the Heliospheric Magnetic Field: Fisk vs Parker" and concerned Roberts's recent research on the structure of the magnetic field in the solar wind that has demonstrated that recently predicted, controversial deviations from the standard solar wind model are not observed.

-  The LWS MOWG is meeting the week of September 20-21 near NASA HQ in downtown DC. A. Szabo (672), the NASA Sentinels Study Scientist will give a report on the conclusions of the ESA Solar Orbiter - NASA Sentinels Joint Science and Technology Definition Team (JSTDT).

-  The NASA Sentinels and ESA Solar Orbiter Joint Science and Technology Definition Team (JSTDT) had its 3rd and final meeting on Sept 5-7 at Imperial College, London, UK. The final prioritization of the science objectives and derived measurement requirements have been made along with a "red team" review of the JSTDT Report. The Report is expected to be publicly released in two weeks with the JSTDT disbanded to allow the timely release of both NASA and ESA AOs for Solar Orbiter instrumentation. An AO for Sentinels is expected within a year or two. Participating in the meeting were Dr. Chris StCyr Senior LWS Project Scientist/671), Dr. Adam Szabo (Sentinels Study Scientist/672) and Dr. Joe Davila (team member/671).

-  Odenwald, Sten, J. Green, W. Taylor, Forecasting the impact of an 1859-calibre superstorm on satellite resources, Adv. Space Research, 38, 280-297, 2006.

-  Peratt, Anthony L., and T. E. Eastman, Guest Editorial: Special Issue on Space and Cosmic Plasma, IEEE Trans. Plasma Science, 35, 741-744, 2007.

-  John Cooper (672) contributed as a science definition team member to the final report now submitted to NASA on the Jupiter System Observer (JSO) as a potential planetary flagship mission. JSO and other mission studies for Europa and Titan will be reviewed this fall and one or more of these mission concepts will be selected for more intensive development in the next year.

-  The 3rd Joint Science and Technology Definition team meeting for the NASA Sentinels and ESA Solar Orbiter will take place on September 5-6 in London, UK. Participating will be Chris StCyr (670, Senior LWS Project Scientist) and Adam Szabo (672, Sentinels STudy Scientist).

-  The Goddard news feature "In Search of Interstellar Dragon Fire" was widely distributed by multiple science news services from August 20th, the 30th anniversary of the Voyager 2 launch, onward and often appeared coincidentally on news sites with NASA JPL's announcements of the anniversary. This feature addressed work of John Cooper (672) on potential interstellar sources of energetic ions in the heliosheath region now being explored by Voyager 1 and potentially very soon by Voyager 2.

-  Weimer, D and J. King, Improved calculations of IMF phase front angles and propagation time delays, J. Geophys. Res, 2007, in press.

-  John Cooper (672) and Steven Sturner (691/UMBC) presented the talk "Hemispheric and Topographic Asymmetry of Magnetospheric Particle Irradiation for Icy Moon Surfaces" at the Workshop on Ices, Oceans, and Fire: Satellites of the Outer Solar System in Boulder, Colorado. This work is relevant to science and mission operations planning for ongoing studies of the Europa Explorer and Jupiter System Observer flagship missions.

-  D. Bilitza (Code 672/GMU) will be visiting Langley on August 23 and give a presentation on the representation of ionospheric storm effects in IRI. He is collaborating with C. Mertens (Langley) on using TIMED/SABER data to develop an E-region stromtime model for IRI.

-  Through a grant with Rowan University in NJ, 25 teachers spent 3 days at GSFC learning about science. They spent 3 hours with the SECEF (672) group setting up their own Space Weather Action Centers and the use of educational technology.

-  Twentyfive teachers from Charles and St. Mary's counties participated in a distance learning event about space weather. Steele Hill (STEREO and SOHO EPO, Code 671.1) and Elaine Lewis (SECEF, 672) provided content, data and images as well as an overview to set up their own Space Weather Center. The presenters were featured in the Washington Post.

-  Space Weather Action Centers was one of 6 featured programs that demonstrated the use of educational technology prior to the STS 118 shuttle launch in Orlando, FL. Troy Cline (672) represented SECEF and demonstrated to a group of 500 how to predict space weather and communicate through educational technology. He also interviewed an astronaut and some participants during the launch. The interviews will be edited and posted as a podcast on the Sun-Earth Day website.

-  New research of John Cooper (672) on interpretation of Voyager 1 energetic particle data in the heliosheath is the subject of the Goddard news article "In Search of Interstellar Dragon Fire" now reposted on several news web sites including SpaceDaily.com. This article is based on his paper being published in the proceedings of the 2007 International Cosmic Ray Conference in Merida, Mexico. The new suggestion of this work is that heliosheath energetic protons and heavier ions originate from sources in local interstellar space beyond the heliosheath and not from acceleration at the solar wind termination shock.

-  Paranicas, C., D. G. Mitchell, S. M. Krimigis, D. C. Hamilton, E. Roussos, N. Krupp, G. H. Jones, R. E. Johnson, and J. F. Cooper, Charged particle weathering of Saturn.s inner satellites, Geophys. Res. Lett., submitted, 2007.

-  John Cooper (672) gave a presentation "Following the Oxidants to Enceladus" at the Enceladus Focus Group meeting at the University of Colorado in Boulder last week. This talk discussed the potential input of oxidants produced by surface ice irradiation to the astrobiological potential of Enceladus.

-  John Cooper (672) has been invited to join the Science Organizing Committee for a new planetary science book on Europa and will be co-author on one chapter about the space radiation environment of Europa.

-  Dieter Bilitza (672/GMU) is hosting a visit this week by Prof. Shin-Yi Su from the Taiwan Central University to discuss the inclusion of his ROCSAT/IPEI ionopsheric data on CDAWeb. Prof Su is the PI for the IPEI instrument and will discuss newest results from his instrument during a special HP seminar Tuesday, August 14. ROCSAT (Republic Of China SATellite) was the first Taiwanese satellite followed by ROCSAT-2 and the most recently by the constellation of the six COSMIC satellites (ROCSAT-3).

-  Narock T. W., T. King, "Developing a SPASE Query Language", Earth Science Informatics, Submitted 7/2007.

-  Merka, J., T. W. Narock and A. Szabo, "Navigating through SPASE to heliospheric and magnetospheric data", Earth Science Informatics, Submitted 7/2007.

-  King, T., T. W. Narock, R. Walker, J. Merka and S. Joy, "A Brave New (Virtual) World: Distributed Searches, Relevence Scoring and Facets", Earth Science Informatics, Submitted 7/2007.

-  King, T., J. Merka, R. Walker, S. Joy and T. W. Narock, "The Architecture of a Multi-tiered Virtual Observatory - The VMO", Earth Science Informatics, Submitted 7/2007.

-  Cooper, J. F., P. D. Cooper, E. C. Sittler, S. J. Sturner, A. M. Rymer, and M. E. Hill, Radiolytic Gas-Driven Cryovolcanism in the Outer Solar System, J. Geophys. Res., submitted, 2007.

-  D. A. Roberts (672) presented the many sources of data and related tools available from GSFC and elsewhere to an LWS-IHY Heliophysics Summer School - 2007 in Boulder Colorado on July 30. The school will use both these data sources and the GSFC-based CCMC model runs in the training of students in this 8-day workshop.

-  John Cooper (672) will make an invited presentation on the Virtual Cosmic Ray Observatory at the science roadmap meeting of the NASA balloon program at NASA Headquarters on August 7th.

-  "Path of Totality, Eclipse - Measuring Angular Size and Distance", a half-hour movie for middle school, has won a 2007 CINE Gold Eagle Award in the category of Children's Education and Entertainment. This video was resulted from a partnership between Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum (SECEF, 672) and NASA Connect in Spring 2006.

-  The 2006 webcast "Total Solar Eclipse: Live from Turkey" was honored with a People's Choice Webby Award in the 11TH ANNUAL WEBBY AWARDS (May 2007). The Webby Award is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet. Each year, the People's Voice Awards garners hundreds of thousands of votes from all over the world. The Exploratorium in partnership with NASA's Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum (SECEF, 672) and the STEREO mission produced the webcast, which featured the March 29, 2006 total solar eclipse.

-  D. Bilitza (Code 672/GMU) attended the COST/IRI Workshop the week of July 9th on Ionosphere Modelling and Applications in Prague, Czech Republic. He reported about his LWS-funded studies towards a better representation of topside densities and temperatures. A major new effort was initiated during this meeting with the goal of developing improved global models for the F-peak density and height. Currently most ionospheric models and applications rely on mappings of these critical ionospheric parameters from a few decades ago (CCIR, URSI). D. Bilitza was elected to lead the international team of experts. URSI, ITU-R and USAF have indicated their interest in and support of the new effort.

-  Gosling, J.T., T. D. Phan, R. P. Lin and A. Szabo, Prevalence of magnetic reconnection at small field shears in the solar wind, Geophysical Research Letters, accepted (2007GL03070), 2007.

-  The CDAWeb heliophysics multi-mission data service (Bob McGuire/672) has been recently extended to include a full range of current THEMIS ground-based US and Canadian magnetometer data and more than four additional years of Geotail high-resolution magnetic field and plasma data.

-  John Cooper (672) gave oral presentations entitled Virtual Cosmic Ray Observatory, and Niagara Falls Cascade Model for Interstellar Ions in the Heliosheath, at the 30th International Cosmic Ray Conference in Merida, Mexico. Papers on each of these topics have been submitted for publication in the conference proceedings.

-  A paper by Y. Collado-Vega, a co-op student in 672, has now been published in J. Geophys. Res. The visualization of MHD data presented is the first to show the evolution of flow vortices. Statistics for a total of 304 vortices found near the ecliptic plane on the magnetopause flanks are presented, using simulated magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) data driven by real solar wind conditions. Magnetopause crossings seen by the Geotail spacecraft for the 9-hour time interval were also analyzed and compared with the MHD simulation to validate results. The vortices generated under northward IMF were more prevalent on the dawnside than on the duskside and were substantially less ordered on the dawnside than on the duskside. Most of the vortices were large in scale, up to 10 RE, and with a rotation axis closely aligned with the ZSM direction. These rotated preferentially clockwise on the dawnside, and counterclockwise on the duskside. Those generated under southward IMF were less ordered, fewer in number, and also smaller in diameter.

-  Troy Cline (Sun-Earth Connection Education Forum) of Code 672 attended the 7th annual "Exceptional Space Science Materials for Exceptional Students (ENWS)" workshop in San Juan, Puerto Rico on June 12-14, 2007. For the past 6 years SECEF team members and other NASA funded science groups have presented and adapted the best products for special needs community. Last week teams worked carefully on a review of the NASA content, materials, presentation methods and best practices that have worked for students and audiences with disabilities. This meeting will result in a final document to be submitted to NASA.

-  D. A. Roberts (672) led the annual meeting of the Heliophysics Virtual Observatories, in Denver on 11 June 2007. These groups will form the core for efficient data discovery, distribution, and analysis for HP data and related services in the coming years as the VOs mature. Roberts, with many others in Code 670, also participated in the associated workshop on Virtual Observatories in Geosciences, to be held on 12-14 June.

-  Shing Fung (672) and Mei-ching Fok (673) are collaborators on an ONR's Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) program. The current collaboration will likely stimulate additional collaborative efforts between Goddard and MURI investigators. The newly awarded MURI to the University of Maryland College Park (Dennis Papadopoulos, PI) will combine field experiments, laboratory experiments, computer simulations and data analysis to study the fundamental physics of Earth radiation belts. The two Heliophysics Division scientists attended the MURI kick-off meeting at the University of Maryland College Park on June 5, 2007.

-  John Cooper (672) attended Cassini meetings of the joint CAPS-MIMI science team, the Enceladus Focus Group, and the Cassini Project Science Group in Greece on the island of Chios and at Athens. He gave presentations on CAPS-related research at the science team and focus group meetings about progress on a model of radiolytic gas-driven cryovolcanism for Enceladus.

-  .J. Merka, A. Szabo, T. W. Narock, T. King, R. J. Walker presented .Distributed development tools and management approaches for the VxO environment: The Linux lessons at the Virtual Observatories in Geosciences Conference, June12-15, 2007, in Denver, Colorado.