Pekka Janhunen, Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

, is a researcher in Finnish Meteorological Institute

Finnish Meteorological Institute

The Finnish Meteorological Institute is the government agency responsible for gathering and reporting weather data and forecasts in Finland. It is a part of the Ministry of Transport and Communications but it operates semi-autonomously....

. He is best known for his Electric Solar Wind Sail

Electric sail

An Electric sail is a proposed form of spacecraft propulsion using the dynamic pressure of the solar wind as a source of thrust. It uses an electric field for deflecting solar wind protons and extracting momentum from them...

http://www.electric-sailing.com/ invention.

The Electric Sail

The Electric Sail could enable travelling at speeds up to 100 km/s in space without any fuel consumption. With no major problems in any of the technical fields thus far, the planning of the first test mission has started, according to an article by Sciencedaily. In the same article, Sciencedaily wrote that "the electric solar wind sail developed by Dr. Pekka Janhunen might revolutionise travelling in space." Janhunen received funding for his electric solar wind sail research from Runar Bäckström foundation in 2005.http://otaniemi.fi/main.site?action=news/view&id=485&ngid=2

Other research

Pekka Janhunen has mainly focused on planetary science

Planetary science

Planetary science is the scientific study of planets , moons, and planetary systems, in particular those of the Solar System and the processes that form them. It studies objects ranging in size from micrometeoroids to gas giants, aiming to determine their composition, dynamics, formation,...

. Some of the advances he has made in the field include "A three-dimensional stabilization mechanism for the auroral Farley-Buneman instability"http://www.space.fmi.fi/~pjanhune/papers/3DStabilization.ps.gz and the suggestion to use electromagnetic ionosphere in global magnetohydrodynamic simulationshttp://www.space.fmi.fi/~pjanhune/papers/IonoModelsAnnales97.txt