Other
Scientific paper
May 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm..sm32a22c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #SM32A-22
Other
2443 Midlatitude Ionosphere, 2463 Plasma Convection, 2494 Instruments And Techniques, 2736 Magnetosphere/Ionosphere Interactions
Scientific paper
Ion drift meters are important tools for investigating ionospheric dynamics. Their primary function is to determine the ion drift velocity Vd or electric field E which are related by , Vd = E x B where B is the magnetic field. In addition to Vd and E, a drift meter may return other useful information depending on its design such as the ion density and temperature. The usual approach is to measure the components of Vd transverse to the spacecraft velocity by the displacement of the ram ion current onto a segmented collector, and the normal component of Vd with an auxiliary Retarding Potential Analyzer. DIDM utilizes a Multi- Channel Plate detector to record individual ion strikes. In LEO, many thousands of ions per second pass through an aperture only a few tens of microns in diameter. This 'pin hole' camera geometry is capable of imaging the ion distribution functions onto the microchannel plate. Among the advantages of this design are its potential for miniaturization and its ability to function in a light-ion rich environments which can plague other designs. Disadvantages include the statistical limit of small samples, and the need for significant on-board digital processing. Another DIDM feature is a spherical RPA design that permits combined drift and RPA functions. DIDM was launched on the German satellite CHAMP on 15 July 2000 into a 421 x 475 km polar orbit. One of two nearly identical sensors was damaged on ascent, but the other sensor has functioned well. Since August we have been collecting/processing thermal plasma data as well as conducting data validation studies. Although the validation effort is on-going, progress is sufficient for public discussion. This presentation will cover the theory of DIDM operations, our data reduction schemes, and current validation results. To date, our efforts have focused on understanding the effects of spacecraft potentials and on comparing DIDM observations with analogous measurements made by DMSP satellites under a variety of geophysical conditions.
Burke W.
Cooke David L.
Huang Chan Chun
Luehr Herman
Roth Camille
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