With the advent of the Heliophysics/Geospace System Observatory (H/GSO), a complement of multi-spacecraft missions and ground-based observatories to study the space environment, data retrieval, analysis, and visualization of space physics data can be daunting. The Space Physics Environment Data Analysis System (SPEDAS), a grass-roots software development platform ( www.spedas.org ), is now officially supported by NASA Heliophysics as part of its data environment infrastructure. It serves more than a dozen space missions and ground observatories and can integrate the full complement of past and upcoming space physics missions with minimal resources, following clear, simple, and well-proven guidelines. Free, modular and configurable to the needs of individual missions, it works in both command-line (ideal for experienced users) and Graphical User Interface (GUI) mode (reducing the learning curve for first-time users). Both options have “crib-sheets,” user-command sequences in ASCII format that can facilitate record-and-repeat actions, especially for complex operations and plotting. Crib-sheets enhance scientific interactions, as users can move rapidly and accurately from exchanges of technical information on data processing to efficient discussions regarding data interpretation and science. SPEDAS can readily query and ingest all International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP)-compatible products from the Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF), enabling access to a vast collection of historic and current mission data. The planned incorporation of Heliophysics Application Programmer’s Interface (HAPI) standards will facilitate data ingestion from distributed datasets that adhere to these standards. Although SPEDAS is currently Interactive Data Language (IDL)-based (and interfaces to Java-based tools such as Autoplot), efforts are under-way to expand it further to work with python (first as an interface tool and potentially even receiving an under-the-hood replacement). We review the SPEDAS development history, goals, and current implementation. We explain its “modes of use” with examples geared for users and outline its technical implementation and requirements with software developers in mind. We also describe SPEDAS personnel and software management, interfaces with other organizations, resources and support structure available to the community, and future development plans. Electronic Supplementary Material The online version of this article (10.1007/s11214-018-0576-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Exploration of energization and Radiation in Geospace (ERG) project explores the acceleration, transport, and loss of relativistic electrons in the radiation belts and the dynamics for geospace storms. This project consists of three research teams for satellite observation, ground-based network observation, and integrated data analysis/simulation. This synergetic approach is essential for obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the relativistic electron generation/loss processes of the radiation belts as well as geospace storms through cross-energy/cross-regional couplings, in which different plasma/particle populations and regions are strongly coupled with each other. This paper gives an overview of the ERG project and presents the initial results from the ERG (Arase) satellite.

The "physics of complexity" in space plasmas is the central theme of this exposition.It is demonstrated that the sporadic and localized interactions of magnetic coherent structures arising from the piasma resonances can be the source for the coexistence of nonpropagating spatiotemporal fluctuations and propagating modes. Non-Gaussian probability distribution functions of the intermittent fluctuations from direct numerical simulations are obtained and discussed. Power spectra and local intermittency measures using the wavelet analyses are presented to display the spottiness of the small-scale turbulent fluctuations and the non-uniformity of coarse-grained dissipation that can lead to magnetic topological reconfigurations. The technique of the dynamic renormalization group is applied to the study of the scaling properties of such type of multiscale fluctuations. Charged particle interactions with both the propagating and nonpropagating portions of the intermittent turbulence are also described. 7https://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20040084709 2018-05-10T23:11:02+00:00Z

Anomalous electron heat fluxes and recent observations of day‐night asymmetries in polar wind features indicate that photoelectrons may affect polar wind dynamics. These anomalous fluxes require a global kinetic description (i.e., mesoscale particle phase space evolution involving microscale interactions); their impact on the polar wind itself requires a self‐consistent description. In this Letter, we discuss results of a self‐consistent hybrid model that explains the dayside observations. This model represents the first global kinetic collisional description for photoelectrons in a self‐consistent classical polar wind picture. In this model, photoelectrons are treated as test particles, ion properties are based on global kinetic collisional calculations, thermal electron features and the ambipolar field are determined by fluid calculations. The model provides the first global steady‐state polar wind solution that is continuous from the subsonic collisional regime at low altitude to the supersonic collisionless regime at high altitude. Also, the results are consistent with experiments in several aspects, such as order of magnitude of the ambipolar electric potential, qualitative features of the ion outflow characteristics, electron anisotropy and upwardly directed electron heat flux on the dayside.

Abstract. We investigate the effects of kinetic waveparticle interactions on the solar wind using a global hybrid model. The model follows the evolution of the particle distributions along an inhomogeneous field line under the influence of wave-particle interactions, an ambipolar electric field that is consistent with the particle distributions themselves, and Coulomb collisions. This represents the "first results" of global evolutionary study of the solar wind that take into account these kinetic effects. The model can account for the bulk acceleration of the solar wind, the preferential heating of the helium ions over the protons, as well as the occasionally observed double-peaked proton velocity distributions. the global evolution of the ion distributions is based on kinetic calculations that, among other major effects, also take into account the Coulomb interactions, including those among the same ion species. The suprathermal electrons, which are the tail portion of the thermal electron distribution at the lower boundary, are also described by a similar approach, except that they are treated as test particles due to their low relative density. The bulk thermal electrons, assumed to be in a drifting Maxwellian, and the arebipolar field are determined with a fluid approach. When combined with Monte Carlo modeling of ion resonant heating, the technique enables us not only to follow the global evolution of the solar wind particle distributions under the effect of wave-particle interactions, but also to determine the influence of the arebipolar electric field that is consistent with the distributions themselves. 3189