Hello Yazan! Mostly my research aims to increase our understanding of what causes various space weather phenomena. For example, right now I am studying a type of electromagnetic wave that can kick the highest energy electrons out of the Earth's radiation belts during geomagnetic storms. While I use what people would call "problem solving skills" to do this work, the research itself is trying gather new information about these waves, and answer scientific questions about what causes them, instead of trying to solve a specific problem. However, I few years ago, I did help solve a problem with a scientific instrument on a NASA satellite mission called Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS). Before MMS was launched, I did computer simulations of the Electron Drift Instrument (EDI) for the MMS mission to develop the tables of voltages used to operate the instrument. Several months after launch, the EDI on one of the MMS spacecraft suddenly started shutting down right after it was powered on. Engineers figured out that there was some kind of electric short that only happened when the voltages exceeded a certain level. Although we couldn't go into space to physically fix the instrument, we could work around the problem. I ran a lot more simulations of the EDI to test out lower voltages and made brand new tables for operating the instrument. When the new tables were transmitted to the spacecraft, they were able to successfully power the instrument back on and start gathering new data.
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