SSL Spotlight: Davin Larson

Davin Larson, project scientist at SSL and principal investigator of the STIS instrument, standing near a rocket housing display in the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Photo credit: Kathryn Chong Quigley

By Alan TothJune, 10, 2026 The Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1 mission, operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), launched in September of last year, and in January it performed its final burn to enter orbit around the Sun at some 1 million miles from the Earth. The mission was renamed…

Read More

MANGO Captures Historic Geomagnetic Storm

colorful circles over line drawing us map

The historic May 11, 2024 geomagnetic storm awed aurora watchers in all 50 states, and scientists are actively analyzing data to determine its impacts on our atmosphere. One example is the NSF-supported MANGO network (Mid-latitude All-sky-imaging Network for Geophysical Observations) in the continental US. MANGO is a partnership between SSL, the University of Illinois and…

Read More

CURIE ready for Ariane 6 launch

Chris Moeckel and Roger Roglans recently returned from Berlin, where they successfully integrated CURIE into the NovaPod with four other satellites. After a stop in Paris, the NovaPod will travel to French Guiana to be launched on an Ariane 6 maiden flight. CURIE is the CUbesat Radio Interferometry Experiment; its two satellites will measure radio…

Read More

Berkeley News: When is an aurora not an aurora?

Phenomena called “Steve” and “picket fence” are masquerading as auroras, graduate student argues. Claire Gasque, a University of California, Berkeley, graduate student in physics, has now proposed a physical explanation for these phenomena that is totally different from the processes responsible for the well-known auroras. She has teamed up with researchers at the campus’s Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) to propose that NASA launch a rocket into the heart of the aurora to find out if she’s correct.

Read More