Comparisons of Thermal Electron Measurements on Two Sounding Rocket Experiments

Details Comparisons of Thermal Electron Measurements on Two Sounding Rocket Experiments Comparisons of Thermal Electron Measurements on Two Sounding Rocket Experiments

Dec 2004

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2004agufmsm51a0334m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2004, abstract #SM51A-0334

Computer Science

Sound

2407 Auroral Ionosphere (2704), 2431 Ionosphere/Magnetosphere Interactions (2736), 2455 Particle Precipitation, 2467 Plasma Temperature And Density, 2494 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

Thermal electron instruments built by the University of New Hampshire have accompanied standard instrumentation flown on a series of two sounding rocket flights, SIERRA and SERSIO. In 2002, SIERRA was launched from Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska, to 735 km into a modest substorm. The instrument response of the thermal electron detector (TED) has been studied extensively (MacDonald et al., 2004). The TED design featured a pinhole electrostatic analyzer designed to detect the flux and energy distribution of the coldest ambient ionospheric electrons. Despite positive biasing the instrument exhibited formation of a potential barrier restricting access to the thermal core. Using coincident data from other instruments information about the thermal plasma temperature, density, and spacecraft potential can be reconstructed. These data and the theories developed to examine them can be studied in conjunction with the next flight. In 2004, SERSIO was launched from Svalbard, Norway to 790 km in intense cusp ion outflow at the beginning of a geomagnetic storm. This payload contained two different designs for measuring thermal electrons and two identical but orthogonal top-hat thermal ion analyzers. In addition to the TED, another new instrument, the ERPA, was developed for detecting thermal electrons via a retarding potential current collector. On the TED, the bias sweep and coating were altered to improve performance. The SERSIO payload flew into sunlight whereas the previous flight was in darkness which greatly changes the nature of the payload current balance situation. Unfortunately SERSIO data was severely limited by mechanical problems which affected instrument deployment and orientation but it is still useful for this purpose. Extensive ground-based radar observations should prove useful for facilitating quantitative comparisons. The performances of the two TEDs are contrasted with the aim of identifying differences due to changes in internal instrumental parameters versus external environment parameters. Also, the two different thermal electron designs on SERSIO, the TED and the ERPA can be compared. Finally, this payload allows a complete comparison between ground-based thermal parameters and their in-situ electron and ion counterparts. This work should help us to understand more about the true nature of the potential sheath around a rocket, necessary for successful direct measurement of ionospheric thermal electrons.

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