STEREO/IMPACT Mission Information

JHU Applied Physics Laboratory STEREO Project site
Descriptions of the spacecraft design and construction

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center STEREO Project site
Descriptions of the overall project and its organization

STEREO Science Center at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Access to STEREO Space Weather data, event information, and overall archive

STEREO/IMPACT Participating Institutions

California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is providing major instrument contributions in the SEP package (mainly LET and HET) withe the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and will help interpret the SEP data

Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements
The Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (CESR) is providing the SWEA instrument and contributing to the analysis of the solar wind data.

CNRS Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees and Observatoire de Paris
CNRS is participating with the Centre d'Etude Spatiale des Rayonnements (CESR) and the University of California - Berkeley in the solar wind data interpretation for IMPACT.

ESTEC - European Space and Technology Center
ESTEC is supplying part of the SEPT instrument provided by the University of Kiel for the SEP package.

KFKI - Hungarian Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics
KFKI is working with the University of Michigan to integrate SEP acceleration into the large scale Sun-to-Earth space weather model.

Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is participating in the solar wind science activity for IMPACT.

Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau is supplying part of the SIT instrument under construction at the University of Maryland.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages the STEREO project.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working with the California Institute of technology (Caltech) on the SEP LET and HET instruments.

NOAA Space Environment Center
The NOAA Space Environment Center (SEC) is providing solar wind propagation models that are complementary to the SAIC coronal models.

SAIC - Science Applications International Corporation
SAIC is providing global coronal modeling support for IMPACT data interpretation that connects IMPACT to SECCHI.

University of California, Berkeley
The University of California - Berkeley is acting as the head institution for the IMPACT investigation.

University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) is carrying out the MAG data processing and will provide a public server for IMPACT data products.

University of Kiel
The University of Kiel is building SEPT with the European Space and Technology Center (ESTEC).

University of Maryland
The University of Maryland is providing the SIT instrument with the assistance of the Max Planck Institut für Aeronomie and participating in the SEP science activity.

University of Michigan
The University of Michigan has a complete Sun-to-Earth space weather model that will be able to include geoeffects of the transients in the corona.

Other STEREO Investigations

SECCHI Imaging Investigation
The primary goal of the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI), a component of the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission. is to advance the understanding of the three-dimensional structure of the Sun's corona, especially regarding the origin of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), their evolution in the interplanetary medium, and the dynamic coupling between CMEs and the Earth environment. SECCHI is a suite of remote sensing instruments consisting of two white light coronagraphs (COR1 and COR2) and an EUV imager (EUVI), collectively referred to as the Sun Centered Imaging Package (SCIP), and a Heliospheric Imager (HI).

SWAVES Radio and Plasma Waves Investigation
The proposed STEREO/WAVES (SWAVES) instrument provides unique and critical observations for all primary science objectives of the STEREO mission, the generation of CMEs, their evolution, and their interaction with Earth's magnetosphere. SWAVES can probe a CME from lift-off to Earth by detecting the coronal and interplanetary (IP) shock of the most powerful CMEs, providing a radial profile through spectral imaging, determining the radial velocity from ~2 RS (from center of sun) to Earth, measuring the density of the volume of the heliosphere between the sun and Earth, and measuring important in situ properties of the IP shock, magnetic cloud, and density compression in the fast solar wind stream that follows. SWAVES will achieve these goals by measuring interplanetary type II and type III radio bursts, both remotely and in situ.

PLASTIC Plasma Ions Investigation
The Plasma and Supra-Thermal Ion Composition (PLASTIC) investigation on STEREO measures ions in the energy-per-charge range of 0.2 to 100 keV/e. PLASTIC is the primary sensor on STEREO for studying coronal-solar wind and solar wind-heliospheric processes. PLASTIC performs three functions in one package: (1) The PLASTIC Solar Wind Sector measures the distribution functions of solar wind protons and alphas (providing density, velocity, kinetic temperature and its anisotropy), with a time resolution of about one minute. (2)The SW Sector also provides, on at least five minute resolution, the elemental composition, charge state distribution, kinetic temperature, and velocity of the more abundant solar wind heavy ions (e.g., C, O, Ne, Mg, Si, and Fe). (3)The PLASTIC Wide Angle Partition measures distribution functions of suprathermal ions H through Fe, with a comparatively large geometrical factor that allows the study of suprathermal particles, including shock-accelerated particles and pick up ions. Together with IMPACT measurements, PLASTIC completes the required STEREO mission in-situ observations.