Victoria N. Coffey

Space Plasma Physics Group

Space Science Department

Mail Code SD50

NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center,

Huntsville, AL 35812

(256) 961-7635

victoria.n.coffey@nasa.gov

Mrs. Coffey obtained a B.S. in Business Administration from Auburn University in 1981, a B.S. in Physics from the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) in 1988 and her M.S in Physics from UAH in 1997.

At Marshall Space Flight Center full time since 1989, Mrs. Coffey has supported the development of flight instruments in the branch. She has optimized particle throughput for flight instrument designs via numerical raytracing and has tested and calibrated several charged particle detectors for flight. She is now continuing the development of a pinhole camera technique for charged particle imaging. For her thesis, she analyzed the characteristics of the thermal bulk ion parameters in the nightside aurora as observed by the STICS instrument on the TOPAZ 3 sounding rocket flight. She is continuing this characterization for the SCIFER / STICS flight which flew in the energization region of the cleft ion fountain. Presently she is the Experiment Scientist for the TICHS instrument that will be on the CAPER sounding rocket to again study this energization region.

Research

• CAPER TICHS/TECHS Testing and Calibration
• Plasma Ion Velocity Imager (PIVI) Development
• Thermal Ion Characteristics Observed by TOPAZ3/STICS
• Thermal Ion Characteristics Observed by SCIFER/STICS

Publications:

Emslie, A. G., V. N. Coffey, and R. A. Schwartz,  "Is the 'Superhot' Hard X-Ray 
   Component in Solar Flares Consistent with a Thermal Source?"  Solar Phys.,
   122(2), 313-317 (1989).

Coffey, V. N. and T. E. Moore,  "The Effect of Induced Charges on Low-Energy Particle
   Trajectories Near Conducting and Semiconducting Plates,"  NASA TM-103589, May 1992.

Coffey, V. N. and T. E. Moore, "Control & Data Acquisition for a Flight Instrument 
   Test Facility," SciTech Journal, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 27-29 (January 1995).

Coffey, V. N., T. E. Moore, C. J. Pollock, The Scanning Thermal Ion Composition 
   Spectrometer, "Measurement Techniques for Space Plasmas", J. Borovsky and R. 
   Pfaff, eds., AGU Monograph, in press.

Pollock, C. J., T. E. Moore, V. N. Coffey, M. L. Adrian, N. Martinez, "Thermal  
   Electron  Capped Hemisphere Spectrometer", "Measurement Techniques for Space Plasmas", J. Borovsky and R. Pfaff, eds., AGU Monograph , in press.

Coffey, V.N. "Characteristics of the Thermal Ion Bulk Parameters in the Nightside
   Aurora as Observed by TOPAZ 3 / STICS, UAH Thesis, 1997.