Description

BIRA-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. BIRA-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 Clusterand 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 organized at BIRA-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, http://www.springer.com/astronomy/extraterrestrial+physics%2C+space+sciences/book/978.1.4419.1322.7).