Gareth Chisham (British Antarctic Survey) has stepped down as Chair of the Scheduling Working Group. Following discussions at the SuperDARN 2016 Workshop at Fairbanks, Alaska the gavel has passed to Evan Thomas, who has recently taken up an NSF-funded postdoctoral position at Dartmouth College following completion of his degree at Virginia Tech. This working group is charged with drawing up monthly operating schedules for the radars and engages the person in each PI group with the major responsibility for uploading the schedules to the radars.

A summary of the workings of the SWG can be found at the working group website:

http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-index.php?page=Scheduling+Working+Group

Outgoing PI at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), Dr. Mervyn Freeman, has announced that, pending approval of the PI committee at the upcoming SuperDARN Workshop at Fairbanks, Alaska, the new PI for the Halley radar will be Dr. Gareth Chisham. Gareth is well known to the SuperDARN community for his extensive body of research utilizing the SuperDARN radar database, his experience in scheduling all the SuperDARN radars, and the much-cited SuperDARN review paper he first-authored in 2007.

Congratulations, Gareth!

Halley was the first SuperDARN-type radar constructed in the southern Hemisphere. For additional historical notes, see
http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-index.php?page=Halley+Info

The SuperDARN 2016 Workshop will be held at Fairbanks, Alaska on May 29 - June 3, hosted by the Geophysical Institute of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF). Scientists, students, and engineers will gather to discuss radar operations and shared research interests. The organizer for the meeting is Roman Makarevich and the UAF SuperDARN PI is Bill Bristow. The webpage for the Workshop is located at http://superdarn2016.gi.alaska.edu
New: A provisional program has been posted at http://superdarn2016.gi.alaska.edu/SD16%20Program.pdf
>> The maximum poster size will be 94"w x 46.5"t

An EOS Buzz article by Sasha Ukhorskiy and colleagues at JHU/APL and NASA/GSFC summarizes the accomplishments of the Van Allen Probes prime mission and describes the science objectives of the extended mission (begun on November 1, 2015) and connections to the NASA MMS and JAXA ERG missions. Note that the sunspot number peaked in April 2014 and we are now in the declining phase of the solar cycle. See https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/153ad3d831ac2cf3
SuperDARN is running modes in support of the satellite missions as described in this earlier article: http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=224

Picture credit: Artist's rendering of the twin Van Allen probes from the EOS Buzz article

News item from Maria Federica Marcucci: A power line failure at Dome C at the end of July 2015 brought down radar operations and subjected the equipment to -60C temperatures. David Biondi (INAF-IAPS) and Enrico Simeoli (CNR-Reti e Sistemi Informativi) have travelled to Dome C and brought the radar back to life. As of January 2, 2016 the radar is once again contributing to the SuperDARN data stream.

Congratulations, David and Enrico! (Pictured here at the site, David on the right)

To view Frederica's full report click 'Read More'.
To view daily summaries of Dome C East and other southern hemisphere radar data, click on the 'Quick Browse / Daily Multi-Radar Plots' link or click on
http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-index.php?page=Latest+Data

Starting in late September 2015, SuperDARN started a new campaign in order to support data being collected on the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission launched by NASA. In addition, the SuperDARN network has been scheduling modes to support new-moon periods over North America to collaborate with all-sky imagers in this area. Lastly, the SuperDARN network continues to identify and schedule periods where the Van Allen probe footprints are within SuperDARN radar field-of-views.

For a link to the web site for the Spacecraft Working Group click here
http://vt.superdarn.org/tiki-index.php?page=Spacecraft+Working+Group&no_bl=y