Event A-112    2012 / 2013 Season

The National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs sponsored Polar Experiment Network for Geospace Upper-atmosphere Investigations (PENGUIn) project is a multi-university collaborative effort dedicated to better understanding the dynamics of Earth's high latitude ionosphere and magnetosphere systems, including their interaction with the high latitude thermosphere and mesosphere. A central part of the project is to understand the coupled response of the entire upper atmosphere and magnetosphere to space weather disturbances across all spatial and temporal scales.

The PENGUIn team is proposing a major effort to support ground-based observations in Antarctica that coincide with a number of important satellite missions, including the extension of Cluster through 2009, the launches of THEMIS (2006) and e-POP (2007), as well as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (2011). In addition to exploiting recent successes with Automated Geophysical Observatories located in the polar cap and cusp, the team will also maximize its scientific return by placing remote observatories in the auroral zone, extending to the outer radiation belt regions, as well as along the magnetic meridian that maps to the west coast of Greenland, where a conjugate chain already exists.