Sarah Vines

Dr. Sarah K. Vines is an experimental space plasma physicist with a broad range of interests throughout the areas of space science and astrobiology. She is the Lead for the Lunar Vertex magnetic field suites, Deputy PI of the Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE), and a member of the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission’s Fluxgate Magnetometer (FGM) instrument team. Her research focuses primarily on solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere interactions, and in particular has focused on magnetopause structure and dynamics at Earth and the outer planets. Her research interests also include onset, development, and hemispherical asymmetries in large-scale field-aligned current systems, properties of electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves and associated plasma conditions for wave growth in the outer magnetosphere, the effects and signatures of ion composition on magnetospheric processes, and solar wind interactions with and origins of lunar magnetic anomalies. Underlying these different topics, her research goals seek to ultimately address the fundamental nature of these plasma interactions across regimes. Dr. Vines also has experience with development and analysis of plasma composition instruments, magnetometers, and of multi-point and multi-mission observations through work on Lunar Vertex, MMS, AMPERE, and other missions, such as Cluster, Juno-JADE, and the CeREs cubesat.