Confirmation and Extension of Magnetospheric Radar Observations at SURA This proposal is to initiate the first step toward realizing the transition of a powerful Soviet military facility to the peaceful study of the geospace environment, the domain of solar-terrestrial science. We envision that the results of this study will reinforce efforts towards a major long-range opportunity for joint US/Russia/Ukraine development of a magnetosheric radar facility. In addition, it seems possible that the same facility could be used as a powerful mesosphere-stratosphere-troposphere (MST) facility. Strong evidence exists that Soviet researchers directly detected, through remote sensing with a magnetospheric radar, the origin of the auroral borealis. This region has only been penetrated before by a few satellites which, due to some intrinsic limitations of spacecraft, provide inadequate data in the key regions. We propose to test, and potentially confirm, this important new tool for ground-based access to the geospace enviroment.
