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Dr Mika Holmberg

Name: Mika Holmberg

Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Email: mika.holmberg@dias.ie

Address: School of Cosmic Physics, DIAS Dunsink Observatory, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, Dublin 15, Ireland.

Research interests:

  • Magnetospheric plasma structures and dynamics
  • Moon-magnetosphere interaction, in particular the icy moons of Jupiter
  • Optimisations of Langmuir probe and particle analyser measurements
  • Spacecraft charging and its impact on in-situ particle and field measurements

Biographical sketch:
Dr. Holmberg obtained her PhD in Physics with a specialisation in Space and Plasma Physics from the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) and Uppsala University, Sweden, in 2016. During her PhD she analysed the Cassini Langmuir probe measurements to study plasma structures and dynamics in Saturn’s magnetosphere. Then she held a post-doc position at the Research Institute in Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP) in Toulouse, France. At IRAP she joined the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) team and studied the structure of the induced magnetosphere of Mars. In 2018, she became a Research Fellow at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. There, her research was focused on the structure and dynamics of the Jovian magnetosphere, the ionospheres of Europa and Ganymede, and spacecraft charging in these environments. She also acted as an expert on space environments and supported a variety of missions, by, for example, simulating the impact of spacecraft charging on the particle and field measurements of the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission in the Jovian system, surface charging of cubesats and the impact of the lunar space environment on astronauts, lunar habitats, and the Lunar Gateway. Her research is focused on studying magnetospheric structures and dynamics of the terrestrial planets Earth, Mars and Venus, and the gas giants Saturn and Jupiter. She also develops data analysis codes for Langmuir probe measurements, and studies spacecraft charging and its impact on in-situ particle and field measurements. As part of the Planetary Magnetospheres group she studies the spacecraft charging of JUICE in the solar wind in order to improve the analysis codes of the JUICE in-situ particle and field instrumentation. More information can be found on the project webpage.

ORCID: 0000-0003-2553-8395

Funding: Selected via the Open Space Innovation Platform and carried out under the Discovery programme of, and funded by, the European Space Agency (Contract No. 4000137683/22/NL/GLC/my).