The Millstone Hill Geospace Facility

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The investigators will continue the operation of, and research associated with, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology radar and distributed ground-based instruments which comprise the Millstone Hill Geospace Facility (GF) in Westford, Massachusetts. The operations plan for Millstone Hill closely follows community guidance in enabling science, maintaining the facility, and conducting education and outreach activities. The facility provides unique capabilities for community science and observations at midlatitudes and in the important plasmasphere boundary layer (PBL) --activities essential for addressing the coupled workings of the Geospace system. The investigators will coordinate and conduct frontier science investigations aligned with community strategies in ionosphere-atmosphere interactions, Geospace system response, ion-neutral coupling, and radio science investigations of fundamental plasma physics. In support of community goals, the Millstone Hill staff will develop and implement new radar and radio remote sensing techniques with improved spatial and temporal resolution. These efforts will advance the technical capabilities of the facility, enabling a wider use of key technology, tools, and approaches that serve to maximize the scientific output of the facilities. Millstone Hill scientific staff will also continue to investigate the development of distributed-instrument arrays, lower atmosphere-upper atmosphere coupling, long-term trends in the ionosphere and thermosphere, and studies of magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling and the plasmasphere boundary layer. The facility operations plan includes activities designed to train and motivate a new generation of space scientists, radio scientists, and technicians through focused research opportunities, technical workshops, and general public outreach. Staff participation in international incoherent scatter radar workshops will focus on graduate students and their mentors. Other international collaborations include radar and radiophysics technical development, and efforts to develop an affordable Geospace-system global observatory. The investigators will maintain and expand the Madrigal Geospace Data System, and train and support the space science community in its use and development. The program includes support for a Boston University graduate student to work with the Millstone Hill Facility, and for continued participation in the Haystack Observatory Research Experiences for Undergraduates program. Millstone staff will also support international collaboration and education by organizing and teaching in schools, workshops and university classrooms, working with undergraduate, graduate, and precollege students, and providing visiting residence programs.