MRI-R2: Development of Owens Valley Solar Array to a Community Facility

该奖项是根据2009年《美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)提供资金的。主要调查员(PI)的团队将为现有的欧文斯谷太阳能电池阵(OVSA)开发新的和改进的仪器和基础设施，从而创建一个服务于广泛科学界的主要大学设施。该团队将对OVSA进行升级，从目前的7个天线增加到总共15个，并增加8个新天线。他们还将用使用新技术的现代、更强大、更可靠的电子设备来取代现有的OVSA控制系统、布线和信号处理系统。该项目将产生一个世界级的微波无线电频率科学研究设施，重点是空间气象物理和太阳天文学。太阳射电辐射对空间天气过程的物理过程非常敏感。增强的OVSA设施将对太阳大气的磁场和热结构、日冕中磁能的释放以及太阳活动对空间天气的影响提供关键的诊断观测。这一努力将为科学界提供新的、强大的射电天文学工具，以及空间、光谱和时间分辨率的独特组合，以利用以前无法实现的对太阳的无线电诊断。改进后的设施将为大学社区提供开放式数据访问和无线电数据分析软件工具，并利用正在进行的非无线电波长波段太阳研究中使用的数据集和分析技术。PI的团队将援引丰富的雷达设计工作遗产来实现广泛的科学目标，这些目标已经经过国家科学院国家研究委员会的彻底审查。该项目将为美国小工业和当地经济提供就业机会，并将为学生以及年轻科学家和工程师提供技术培训和科研经验。这项开发工作将在宽带射频工程、高速数字电子和信号处理以及高性能计算领域为学员提供急需的仪器专业知识。该项目包括针对本科生和研究生以及博士后研究人员和初级工程师的综合教育和培训计划。该项目开发的仪器和软件将为课堂使用提供新的工具，并将扩大研究人员的基础，他们将能够应用干涉成像技术和无线电发射物理来研究太阳物理、空间气象物理和天体物理中的关键问题。PI预计，新的OVSA设施带来的新发现将帮助我们提高我们在地球和太空中技术系统的可靠性。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The Pricipal Investigator's (PI's) team will develop new and improved instrumentation and infrastructure for the existing Owens Valley Solar Array (OVSA), and thereby create a major university-based facility serving a broad scientific community. The team will upgrade OVSA from its current complement of 7 antennas to a total of 15, with the addition of 8 new antennas. They will also replace existing OVSA control systems, wiring, and signal processing systems with modern, more capable, and more reliable electronics using new technologies. The project will result in a world-class facility for scientific research at microwave radio frequencies, focused on space weather physics and solar astronomy. Solar radio emission is very sensitive to the physics of space weather processes. The enhanced OVSA facility will provide key diagnostic observations of the magnetic and thermal structure of the solar atmosphere, the release of magnetic energy in the corona, and the space weather consequences of solar activity. This effort will provide the scientific community with new and powerful tools for radio astronomy in general, as well as a unique combination of spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution to exploit radio diagnostics of the Sun beyond what has previously been possible. The improved facility will support the university community by providing open data access and software tools for radio data analysis, and by exploiting data sets and analysis techniques used in on-going solar research in non-radio wavelength bands. The PI's team will invoke a rich heritage of radar design work to accomplish a wide range of science objectives that has been thoroughly vetted by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. The project will provide jobs to US small industry and to the local economy, and will offer technical training and scientific research experience for students, as well as young scientists and engineers. This development effort will provide trainees with much-needed instrumental expertise in the fields of broadband radio frequency engineering, high-speed digital electronics and signal processing, and high performance computing. The project includes well-integrated education and training plans for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as for post-doctoral researchers and entry-level engineers. The instrumentation and software developed by this project will provide new tools for classroom use, and will enlarge the base of researchers who will be able to apply interferometric imaging techniques and radio emission physics to studying key problems in solar physics, space weather physics, and astrophysics. The PI expects that new discoveries enabled by the new OVSA facility will help us improve the reliability of our technological systems on Earth and in space.