Speaker: Rafael Luiz Araujo de Mesquita, JHU/APL
The Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE) is a NASA three-satellite mission with the overarching goal of characterizing the structure and dynamics of the auroral electrojets flowing at altitudes around 100 km in the auroral regions. Studying these currents provide insight into the Earth-Space electrical current circuit and provide strong observational constrains on the underlying magnetospheric processes. The two science objectives are determining which of the proposed substorm current wedge configurations is right and determining to what extent the auroral electrojet consist of wedgelet currents. This presentation will be an overview of the mission and description of the Zeeman technique used to infer the vector magnetic field. It will also feature the use of observing system simulation experiments, an end-to-end procedure to simulate the instrument measurements, to best demonstrate the success of the mission and the use of these simulations to produce observation strategies. Other possible data products from this mission will be discussed along with several collaboration opportunities.