Project Partner

IASB
Institut royal d’Aéronomie Spatiale de Belgique
Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy

Brussels, Belgium

IASB is a federal institute of the Belgian government. It has been created in 1964, and is divided into 4 main departments: atmospheric composition, atmospheric chemistry, radiation in atmospheres, and space physics. IASB has been involved deeply in plasmaspheric research. Prof. Lemaire has done lots of pioneering work in the region of the plasmasphere (formation of plasmapause, theoretical work and numerical simulations). A kinetic model of the plasmasphere has been developed at the institute; it has been validated and compared with satellites data from several missions. Since 2000, lots of data analysis has been done with ESA’s Cluster and NASA’s IMAGE data in the plasmasphere (small-scale density structures, plasmaspheric plumes, plasmapause position), and also with Van Allen Probes and Dynamic Explorer-1 NASA missions. A workshop dedicated to the plasmaspheric discoveries made during the last 10 years has been organised at IASB in 2007. Following this workshop, a group of scientists prepared a review of IMAGE and Cluster accomplishments in the field of plasmaspheric science. This has been published in 2009 in the book entitled “The Earth’s Plasmasphere: A CLUSTER and IMAGE Perspective” by Darrouzet, De Keyser and Pierrard (2009).