First Results of the Genesis Solar Wind Ion and Electron Spectrometers

Details First Results of the Genesis Solar Wind Ion and Electron Spectrometers First Results of the Genesis Solar Wind Ion and Electron Spectrometers

Dec 2001

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agufmsh31b0710w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2001, abstract #SH31B-0710

Computer Science

Performance

2159 Plasma Waves And Turbulence, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 7851 Shock Waves, 7863 Turbulence, 7899 General Or Miscellaneous

Scientific paper

The NASA Genesis mission to collect and return samples of solar wind to Earth was launched August 8, 2001 on a trajectory to orbit the L1 point for 2.5 years. The spacecraft is a sun-pointed spinner equipped with ion and electron spectrometers which were turned on in late August and have been working successfully. An on-board algorithm processes the raw spectrometer data to identify the solar wind regime, classifying it as either interstream, coronal hole, or coronal mass ejection, and deploys the appropriate regime-specific solar wind collector, all in real time without ground intervention. The performance of this on-board regime selection is the subject of a separate talk. Raw data, moments, and regime selections are telemetered to the ground three times a week, giving relatively rapid access to the data. The Genesis ion monitor (GIM) consists of an electrostatic sector and 8 CEM detectors. Each spectrum consists of 40 azimuthal angles, 8 polar angles (0-24 deg from the average solar wind direction, centered 4.5 degrees west of the sun), and 40 energy steps, ranging up to 15 keV/q. The electron monitor (GEM) sensor head is an exact copy of those on ACE and Ulysses. The sensor has 7 polar angles covering +/-75 degrees from the plane normal to the average solar wind direction, with 24 azimuthal bins. Energies currently covered are 20 to 960 eV, but can be configured for either higher or lower energies. Full energy/angle spectra from both instruments are produced every ~2.5 minutes. The Genesis spacecraft L1 orbit insertion is scheduled for early November. Its L1 halo orbit has a radius of ~1 million km, significantly larger than the ~0.3 and ~0.7 x 0.2 million km orbits of ACE and SOHO, respectively, presenting opportunities for time-resolved cluster observations of solar wind flow properties. We will present highlights of our observations since turn-on.

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