Lecture to examine space storms

Lecture to examine space storms
………………………………………………

Space storms,
which have the ability to knock out communications satellites
and even power grids on Earth, are the topic of a talk March
28 at Rice University.

James L. Burch,
vice president for space science and engineering at the
Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, will deliver
a talk titled “The Fury of Space Storms.”

As the 18th annual
Marlar Memorial lecturer, Burch will speak at 7:30 p.m.
in McMurtry Auditorium, Anne and Charles Duncan Hall. A
reception will follow. The event, sponsored by the Rice
Space Institute, is free, and the public is invited.

The lecture also
will be webcast and can be watched in real time online at <www.rice.edu/webcast/>.

Burch is the
lead scientist for a new spacecraft, NASA’s Imager
for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) satellite
— the first remote sensing “space weather” spacecraft.

Shock waves
from the sun can trigger severe storms in Earth’s space
environment, endangering satellites and astronauts in orbit.
Launched March 25, 2000, IMAGE is showing how space storms
develop as the first satellite dedicated to obtaining entire
images of the magnetosphere, the teardrop-shaped region
of space protected by the Earth’s magnetic field.

By providing
an overall picture of the activity in the magnetosphere,
IMAGE does for space what the first weather satellites did
for the Earth’s atmosphere.

Burch received
a doctorate from Rice in 1968. Several Rice alumni are involved
in all of the IMAGE instrument types: Dave Young ’67
is co-investigator with the Medium-Energy Neutral Atom (MENA)
imager; Bill Sandel ’68 is lead investigator with the
Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUV); Stephen Mende, a Rice
postdoctoral researcher in the ’70s, is lead investigator
with the Far Ultraviolet Imager (FUV); and Patricia Reiff
’74, professor of physics and astronomy and director
of the Rice Space Institute, is co-investigator with the
Radio Plasma Imaging (RPI) instruments.