Professor Jasper Halekas has been awarded $128,705 from the University of Minnesota and NASA to analyze data collected from the Parker Solar Probe to study charged particles and electromagnetic fields in the solar wind.

The award, “Investigating the radial evolution of the interactions between solar wind plasma, macroscopic structures, and intermediate frequency waves” is through NASA's Living With a Star (LWS) program, with Cynthia Cattell at the University of Minnesota as principal investigator.

As co-Investigator on the project, Halekas' role on the project is to analyze electron velocity distributions from Parker Solar Probe and other solar wind missions, utilizing a combination of fitting and moment computations to characterize the components of the solar wind electrons as a function of radial distance and solar wind conditions and to relate the electron properties to the observed plasma waves. University of Iowa graduate student Raaman Nair will also be involved in this work.

"We're trying to understand the radial evolution of the charged particles and electromagnetic fields in the solar wind, and how they interact with each other and exchange energy as the solar wind flows out from the Sun through the solar system," Halekas said.