Report of the Workshop held in Sagamihara, Japan
31 May to 2 June 1994


Toward a New Era of Global
Solar-Terrestrial Research

The Third Inter-Agency
Consultative Group (IACG) Campaign:

Solar Events and Their Manifestation in
Interplanetary Space and in Geospace


Editors
V. Domingo and B. Fleck
ESA Space Science Department


April 1995

Preface


Solar-terrestrial science is of fundamental interest and importance since its aims are to understand the physical environment of the Earth in space and the impact of the Sun on that environment. Hence, it is concerned with both basic space-physics processes and the habitability of the Earth, as well as the understanding of the structure and behaviour of the Sun, particularly of its atmosphere, as it ultimately controls the solar-terrestrial environment.

The Inter-Agency Consultative Group for Space Science (IACG) decided in the mid 1980s to focus its collaborative efforts in the field of solar-terrestrial physics, because in the present decade the four agencies that compose the IACG had, or were to have, operating a substantial number of scientific spacecraft devoted to solar-terrestrial physics.

The IACG form of informal global collaboration provides the means for optimally coordinated operations, and a mechanism for data sharing and joint data analysis by the science communities associated with the IACG members. Clearly, the scientific output of each of these missions will be significantly enhanced by the opportunity to achieve coordination with one or several other missions through the auspices of the IACG.

To focus the cooperation the IACG decided to propose to the scientific community the realization of campaigns that would be topic oriented and make use of the approved missions of the four agencies. The term "campaign" is used here in a very broad sense and is meant to define a set of activities that enhance the scientific return of the observations made with the different spacecraft by selecting periods of time when simultaneous observations will be made. It includes times when suitable observations are made by ground-based observatories, and encompasses coordinating thereafter the cooperative analysis of the data.

The three campaigns first proposed centre around a core group of IACG missions (Geotail, Wind, Interball, Polar, SOHO, Cluster, Ulysses, Yohkoh, Coronas), but make use also of many of the other solar-terrestrial and heliospheric missions. A 4th campaign has been defined to take advantage of the passage of Ulysses over the solar poles in 1994 and 1995. As a starting point, for each of the proposed campaigns a workshop was held, to discuss baseline scientific requirements and draft an operations strategy for the campaign.

Reports on the workshops for the first (Magnetotail Energy Flow and Non-Linear Dynamics) and second (Boundaries in Collisionless Plasmas) campaigns have been published in October 1992 and December 1993, respectively. A workshop on "Solar Sources of Heliospheric Structure Observed out of the Ecliptic" to define the forth campaign was held in Easton, Maryland on January 1994, and a report is being produced.

The present Report is a result of the Workshop that was held in Sagamihara, Japan, on 31 May - 2 June 1994. 57 scientists representing the solar-terrestrial space missions of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), the European Space Agency (ESA), the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), and the Russian Space Agency (RSA) discussed and agreed on the scientific requirements, campaign organization and strategy to carry out the Third IACG campaign on "Solar Events and their Manifestation in Interplanetary Space and in Geospace".

Table Of Contents Forward>


Last Modified:
(G.C.G.)