Connor A. Feltman

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I'm a graduate student researcher pursuing a PhD in space plasma physics at the University of Iowa. I focus primarily on studying the plasma in the Magnetosphere-Ionosphere coupling system between earth's magnetic field and its neutral atmosphere, which often manifests as aurora. I'm currently assisting the in Auroral Current and Electrodynamics Structure II (ACES-II) sounding rocket mission, which will fly two payloads directly into a discrete auroral event from Andoya, Norway. ACES-II aims to study the distribution of ionoshperic Hall and Pedersen currents within a discrete arc and hopes to better characterize Joule Heating within the ionosphere.
I have assisted in the construction of five nearly identical top-hat style electrostatic analyzers for this mission working on board-level performance and quality testing. An analyzer of similar design will be flown on the TRACERS mission, which is a SMEX-level dual-satellite mission studying the cusp region of earth's magnetosphere.