James Paul Mason
James Paul Mason
Research Scientist/Engineer
Research Scientist/Engineer
STUFF I WORK ON
Satellites
CubeSats, in particular
I'm the Principal Investigator for the NASA CubeSat: Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker (SunCET).
I've been heavily involved in every aspect of the highly successful NASA MinXSS CubeSat missions, as well as ≥20 other s.
Solar physics
Explosions on the sun
I study solar eruptive events, including how we can use the void they leave behind in the corona to predict how much mass was kicked out and at what speed: useful for space weather and exoplanet habitability.
Sounding rockets
Launched and recovered in New Mexico
We send up a rocket every other year to measure how bright the sun is in ultraviolet and x-ray light.
Click the image above to watch the GoPro-like onboard videos.
CURRENT POSITION
I used to work at University of Colorado Boulder / Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and Stanford University
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Senior Professional Staff
2021 November – Present
Leading the Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker CubeSat to observe full coronal mass ejection acceleration profiles for the first time. I also write open source code in python, IDL, and other languages to analyze large amounts of data collected by satellites observing the sun.
Projects
software, video, music
Announcement of SunCET CubeSat
NASA selected the Sun Coronal Ejection Tracker (SunCET) small satellite for spaceflight. Check out my announcement and summary of the mission.
I've also got a twitter thread with more details here.
CubeSat beacon decoder / forwarder
Ham radio operators around the world can and have been using this application to listen to beacons from the MinXSS CubeSat and see real time telemetry from the satellite. It automatically forwards the data to the MinXSS team.
I wrote this software from scratch.
It's cross platform.
And it's entirely open source.
The ham community has since built and bought into SatNOGS, which is absolutely amazing.
Making of MinXSS video
I had taken 55 GB of video as we built and tested this satellite and knew no one would ever see it unless I compressed it into 5 minutes. I wrote the orchestral music for it as well.
Music
I write music in a variety of styles: orchestral, electronic, and (way back in time) metal. You can find the stuff I'm not embarrassed about on soundcloud.
Public lecture
I gave a public talk about how great MinXSS is from a variety of perspectives.
Publications
You can find a listing of all my publications on solar physics, space weather, and aerospace engineering on the Astrophysics Data System or ResearchGate.
