[SPA] SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER, Volume XXXI, Issue 24

[Newsletter Editor]

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION
SPA SECTION NEWSLETTER
Volume XXXI, Issue 24
Apr.20,2024

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Table of Contents

1. Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Klaus Torkar (1950 – 2024)

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Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Klaus Torkar (1950 – 2024)

From: Bruno Besser, Harald Jeszenszky, Gunter Laky, Werner Magnes, Rumi Nakamura and colleagues from the IWF/OeAW (rumi.nakamura at issibern.ch)

Colleagues and friends of the IWF have paid tributes to Professor Klaus Torkar who passed away peacefully on March 17, 2024. Klaus Torkar began his career at the Space Research Institute (IWF) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1975, immediately after completing his electrical engineering/electronics diploma at the Graz University of Technology. He was involved in experiments with rockets and balloons, and began to familiarize himself with the topics of plasma physics, ionospheric physics and the physics of the upper atmosphere. He was awarded his doctorate at the beginning of 1978.

With IWF’s contribution to “Spacelab”, Klaus came into contact with the so-called "active experiments", which were based on artificial particle beams. In 1989, he successfully completed his habilitation thesis on the subject and became a university lecturer with a teaching license for experimental space research. This experience and involvements in potential control attempts in missions such as GEOTAIL, AUSTROMIR or INTERBALL made him the logical choice as a technical manager for the instrument ASPOC - Active Spacecraft Potential Control, when it was accepted for ESA’s Cluster mission.

Despite the early end of CLUSTER I, ASPOC became a success story in the long term. Under Klaus Torkar's project management, the IWF, together with international partners, built variants of the device for the EQUATOR-S mission carried out by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, for CLUSTER II, for the European-Chinese Double Star project and finally eight ASPOC flight models for the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, in which the most advanced ASPOC variants are still working largely flawlessly 10 years after the start of the mission.

Klaus intensive involvement with potential control made him a proven and internationally highly respected expert on the effects of electrical charging of satellites and the measures to control it. Until shortly before his death, Dr. Torkar was still in active exchange with colleagues at the IWF, which testifies to his deep attachment to this research topic. Klaus Torkar also left his mark on two other IWF instrument participations. Firstly, as PI of MIDAS (Micro Imaging Dust Analysis System) for the ROSETTA mission to the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, he was responsible for an instrument based on atomic force microscopy for characterizing comet dust particles. Secondly, Dr. Torkar's led the ion spectrometer as Co-PI the PICAM (Planetary Ion Camera), which was built as part of the SERENA (Search for Exospheric Refilling and Emitted Natural Abundances) instrument package, for the ongoing ESA BepiColombo mission to Mercury.

His numerous participations in the international leading space mission project are a hallmark of Klaus Torkar's scientific excellence authoring many significant papers. He was a scientist, engineer, and manager with personnel responsibility all rolled into one. Thus, he had a decisive influence on the Space Research Institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the people who had the privilege to work with him.

Rest in peace!


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