John Harlander, emeritus physics professor.
John Harlander, emeritus physics professor, was part of a three-person Facebook Live presentation at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting Dec. 13 in San Francisco.
Arguably one of the world’s preeminent science societies, the American Geophysical Union has more than 62,000 members from 144 nations.
Harlander discussed MIGHTI, an optical instrument that will measure winds and temperatures in the thermosphere, an upper layer of Earth’s atmosphere. He designed, fabricated and tested it in collaboration with other scientists and his St. Cloud State students.
Photo of MIGHTI courtesy of University of California, Berkeley.
The instrument will be part of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory’s ICON satellite mission, which is slated to be launched June 2017 from a high-altitude airplane over the Pacific Ocean.
Monday’s presentation teamed Harlander with Tom Immel, University of California, Berkeley professor, and Christoph Englert, MIGHTI instrument lead.
Immel is the ICON principal investigator. Englert is head of the Geospace Science and Technology Branch in Naval Research Laboratory’s Space Science Division.
The data MIGHTI gathers will help scientists understand how changes in the upper atmospheric layers are related to changes in the thermosphere above, where satellites travel, according Immel.
- Meet the MIGHTI team
- Meet the ICON team
Harlander has worked with the Washington D.C.-based Naval Research Laboratory for about 20 years. He retired from St. Cloud State in 2015 and is now affiliated with Space Systems Research Corporation, Alexandria, Virginia.
Founded in 1919, the American Geophysical Union promotes discovery in Earth and space science for the benefit of humanity.
MIGHTI — Michelson Interferometer for Global High-resolution Thermospheric Imaging — is named for Albert Michelson, a physicist who measured the speed of light using an interferometer.
The ICON mission — Ionospheric Connection Explorer — is a collaboration of federal agencies and American universities, headed by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, which is northeast of Washington D.C.
Listen to Harlander’s remarks at the 4:55 mark.
