Heidi Manning

Title: Chair, Associate Professor
Department: Physics
Phone: 218.299.3393
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Degrees and Education:

  • Ph.D

Courses Taught:

  • Credo 222
  • Physics 215

Research / Teaching Interests:

Chair, Division of Sciences and Mathematics


Scholarly Activities:

I am an experimental physicist.

  • That means when I do research, I spend most of my time playing with things in the laboratory and trying to make experiments work.
My research career so far has focused on developing instruments that help us learn more about atmospheres.
  • More specifically I have worked on developing mass spectrometers that have and will be used to learn more about the Earth's atmosphere and atmospheres around other objects in the solar system.
So far, my research has been carried out in 3 places

University of Minnesota

I earned my Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Minnesota.
My thesis research was developing and calibrating a mass spectrometer for use in the Earth's Upper Atmosphere.  This was know as the REFLEX mass spectrometer.

This instrument was flown in January, 1996 on a sub-satellite of the space shuttle.  It was designed to study self-contanimation of spacecraft.  Basically, we were hoping to better understand how gases leave a spacecraft, undergo collisions with ambient atmospheric atoms or molecules and are reflected back to the spacecraft from which they came.  This information is important improving the design of missions in the Earth's atmosphere.

During the summer of 1998, Jason Bursack, Nathan Frank and myself analyzed the data from this mission.  More information about the about mission and the result of the analysis are available here.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

After I got my Ph.D., I went to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD and worked there for 2 years in the atmospheric experiment branch.

  • While at Goddard, my research focused on building mass spectrometers that would be used to explore other objects in the solar system.
  • My work at Goddard included working on Cassini's INMS  (Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer) developing, testing and calibrating that instrument in preparation for its mission to Saturn and Titan.
  • Some of the other mass spectrometers the group has developed or is developing include:
    • Huygen's Probe GCMS:  a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer that is now enroute to Saturn on board the Cassini spacecraft.  The probe will decent through the atmosphere of Titan.  The GCMS will measure the chemical composition of that atmosphere.
    • Gallileo Probe Mass Spectrometer:  a mass spectrometer which plunged into the atmosphere of Jupiter in 1995.
    • Pioneer Venus Orbiting Neutral Mass Spectrometer:  a mass spectrometer which further our understanding of the composition of Venus's atmosphere.
    • Planet B Neutral Mass Spectrometer:  a mass spectrometer carried on a Japaneese mission to Mars.  It will measure vertical and horizonal density variations in the neutral constituents in the upper atmosphere of Mars.
    • Contour:  a mass spectrometer that explore 3 comets on a tour in of the solar system.

    • Aeronomy Satellites:  Earth satellites developed in the 1960's that furthered our understanding of the Earth's atmosphere

Concordia College

Cosmic Dust Studies