|
|
About SPRG at SSL
Located on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley,
just above the Lawrence Hall of Science and
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories,
the Silver Space Sciences Laboratory was built by
NASA in 1966 to conduct basic space research in a variety
of fields. The Berkeley Space Physics Research Group (SPRG) occupies the third floor and currently
has 4 physics department professors, 9 research fellows, 39 research physicists, 12 graduate students, 3 junior researchers, and more than 50 engineers and technicians engaged in ongoing experimental space physics projects.
SPRG conducts experimental research in space plasma physics on a variety of different spacecraft
covering the earth's magnetosphere, auroral zone, tail region, the interplanetary solar wind, and
in the near-space environments of other planets. Our emphasis is generally on the detailed, high time
and spatial resolution measurements of the microphysics that governs the behavior of the larger scale
processes occurring in these planetary, interplanetary, and presumably most other astrophysical plasmas.
To accomplish this aim we conceive, design, and build state-of-the-art plasma particle detectors and
electric field sensors to make in situ measurements of fields and particle distributions in various
space plasmas. From these measurements we can study particle acceleration, plasma waves, wave-particle
interactions, currents, various types of shocks and boundaries between different plasma environments,
and other phenomena of interest to both basic plasma physics and general space physics. Instruments
are flown on small NASA sounding rockets to study particle acceleration and wave-particle interactions
in the Earth's northern auroral zone, while a multitude of satellite missions currently underway or
in construction carry our instruments to more distant space plasmas surrounding the earth or in other
regions of the solar system.