Data Visualization and Selection for NASA’s MMS Mission
Mitsuo Oka, Research Scientist
Space Sciences Laboratory
Applications for Fall 2024 are closed for this project.
NASA’s Magnetospheric MultiScale (MMS) mission consists of a fleet of four spacecraft orbiting Earth. Since its launch in 2015, it has significantly advanced our understanding of Earth's plasma environment, in particular the electron-scale physics of explosive energy-release phenomena. This summer, NASA began transitioning the fleet formation from the current tetrahedral configuration to the so-called string-of-pearl configuration. With this change, it is increasingly important to have a tool that enables scientists to quickly view and decide which parts of the observation should be transmitted to the ground with the highest resolution ("burst data"). Therefore, while we have been using the "EVA" software -- coded in Interactive Data Language (IDL) -- for such data selection tasks, we started developing a new web-based app using Javascript, Python (with libraries like Flask and SPEDAS) and other technologies.
Role: We are seeking a highly skilled student with a strong background in front-end development, particularly in Javascript, HTML, and Python. Our team currently includes a staff scientist (working on mission-specific interface code and overseeing the entire project) and an undergraduate student specializing in back-end development. The new student will play an important role in the developing the front-end of our application, i.e., graphical user interface needed for the data visualization and selection, in close collaboration with the team. Optionally, the student may gain familiarity with the basic concepts of space plasma physics.
Qualifications: Substantial experience of Javascript, HTML and CSS for web-app development is required. If selected for an interview, applicants are expected to show some codes they have written before (preferably through sharing a link to their GitHub page).
Hours: to be negotiated
Off-Campus Research Site: The students are expected to work on-site at Space Sciences Laboratory (7 Gauss Way, Berkeley, CA 94720).
Related website: https://github.com/spedas/pyspedas
Related website: https://github.com/spedas/pyspedas