The Vector Electric Field Investigation on the C/NOFS Satellite

Details The Vector Electric Field Investigation on the C/NOFS Satellite The Vector Electric Field Investigation on the C/NOFS Satellite

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufmsa11a1483p&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #SA11A-1483

Physics

2411 Electric Fields (2712), 2415 Equatorial Ionosphere, 2437 Ionospheric Dynamics, 2439 Ionospheric Irregularities, 2494 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

We provide an overview of the Vector Electric Field Investigation (VEFI) on the Air Force Communication/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) satellite, a mission designed to understand, model, and forecast the presence of equatorial ionospheric irregularities. VEFI is a NASA/GSFC instrument funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory whose main objectives are to: 1) investigate the role of the ambient electric fields in initiating nighttime ionospheric density depletions and turbulence; 2) determine the quasi-DC electric fields associated with abrupt, large amplitude, density depletions, and 3) quantify the spectrum of the wave electric fields and plasma densities (irregularities) associated with density depletions typically referred to as equatorial spread-F. The VEFI instrument includes a vector electric field double probe detector, a fixed-bias Langmuir probe operating in the ion saturation regime, a flux-gate magnetometer, an optical lightning detector, and associated electronics. The heart of the instrument is the set of detectors designed to measure DC and AC electric fields that use 6 identical booms to form three orthogonal 20-m tip-to-tip double probes. Each probe extends a 12-cm diameter sphere containing an embedded preamplifier and short (30 cm) boom extensions outboard of the spheres to minimize photoelectron shadow effects. VEFI also includes a burst memory that enables snapshots of data from 1-8 channels of selected sensors to be sampled at rates of up to 32 kHz each. The bursts may be triggered by the detection of density depletions, intense electric field wave activity in a given frequency band, lightning detector pulses, or an event at a pre-determined time or location. All VEFI instrument components are working exceptionally well. A description of the instrument, its sensors, and their sampling frequencies and sensitivities will be presented. Representative measurements will be shown.

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