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The study is reported of electron and proton precipitation in different auroral forms from data obtained by the TWINS 1 and 2. The measurement of the energy spectra and pitch angle distributions of auroral electrons is discussed along with the auroral electron code for predicting the scattering and energy loss of electrons covering the complete auroral energy spectrum.
Analysis of ATS 5 particle spectrograms and simultaneous meridian-scanning photometer data obtained at the base of the ATS field line has revealed systematic relationships between temporal and spatial auroral morphology and particle-injection events. The details of these relationships depend on previous injection events, the local time of the observatory with respect to current-injection events, and the extent and magnitude of current injections. A persistent zone of weak aurora is related to steady plasma-sheet drizzle, and the equatorward edge of this aurora delineates field lines threading the inner edge of the plasma sheet. Auroras associated with injection events superimpose on this preexisting pattern, with the lowest latitude of new precipitation depending on local time. In general, plasma energization is not required between the equatorial plane and the ionosphere to account for observed auroral intensities. The data indicate occasional occurrence of enhanced loss-cone fluxes, suggesting low-altitude field-aligned acceleration. A summary figure shows how various characteristic auroral-precipitation regions are related to the shape, extent, and orientation of the substorm injection boundary and to the subsequent drift paths of injected plasma.
Results are given of the Pioneer Venus observation of the hydrogen coma of Comet P/Giacobini-Zinner on September 11, 1985 during the fly-by conducted by the International Cometary Explorer (ICE). Analysis of the data with a time-dependent 3-D particle-trajectory model implies a water production rate of 2.2 x 10 to the 28 per second on that day. The model includes the irregular variations in the H lifetime and the H Lyman-alpha fluorescence rate determined from simultaneous measurements of the solar wind by ICE and of the solar UV by the Solar Mesosphere Explorer (SME), respectively. The H lifetime varied from 2 x 10 to the 5 to 3 x 10 to the 6 seconds during the 42 days preceding the observation.
The Get Away Special payload to investigate the formation of inorganic precipitates (G-405) utilizes six transparent chemical reaction chambers to actively mix a dry powder with a liquid solution. At predetermined intervals the progress of the precipitate formation is photographed and stored as data. The precipitate particles will also be subject to post-flight analysis. The various tasks performed during the 14 hour duration of the experiment are initiated and monitored by a custom-built digital controller. The payload is currently scheduled as a backup payload for STS-29 with a possible launch date of January, 1989.
Analysis of Voyager 2 low-energy charged particle and magnetic field data in the Uranian magnetotail show that this system has many features similar to those seen at earth. Isotropization of core magnetosphere 28-43 keV ions has been observed at the trapping boundary upon entry into the magnetotail near L = 17, an effect seen in ion populations at earth and attributed to neutral sheet scattering. An extensive and persistent plasma sheet boundary layer is found to contain field-aligned ion streams with a variety of angular and energetically dispersive effects. Streaming distributions in the magnetotail horn region map to the auroral emission region observed by the Voyager ultraviolet spectrometer. A quiet-time near-tail region is distinguished from a distant disturbed region, where evidence of a substorm is observed. There is evidence suggesting that the distant plasma sheet is not corotating with the planet.
The relative contributions of comets and asteroids to the reservoir of dust in the interplanetary medium is not known. There are direct observations of dust released from comets and there is evidence to associate the IRAS dust bands with possible collisions of asteroids in the main belt. A means towards sorting out the parent sources has been proposed in the establishment of a dust collector in orbit about the Earth. The purpose of such a facility would be to collect not only cosmic dust particles intact but also the state vectors, as they arrive at the detector, the idea being that one may combine analytical laboratory analysis of the physics and chemistry of the captured particles with orbital data in order to help distinguish between bodies and identify parent bodies. The theoretical study of dust particle orbits in the solar system takes on greatly more importance if we use collected trajectory data. The orbital motion of dust when radiation and forces alone are acting is well understood. When gravitational forces due to the planets are included, the motion can become quite complex. In order to characterize the orbits of particles as they crossed the Earth's orbits, a study of the long-time dust orbital evolution was undertaken. We have considered various parameters associated with these dust orbits to see if one may in a general way discriminate between particles evolved from comets and asteroids. We proceed in this study as we have done previously. That is, we considered the dust particles as ideal black bodies, of density 1 gm/cc, spherical, with radii 10-100 microns. Particles of this size are affected by radiation forces, photon pressure, and Poynting-Robertson drag. Account was also taken of solar wind drag, which amounts to about 30 percent of the Poynting-Robertson drag negligible. The gravitational forces due to the planets are included, unlike in our previous study; the planetary orbits are those of true n-body interaction so that the possibility of secular resonance is included. Our method was to calculate explicitly by a numerical procedure the orbits of dust particles after they left their parent bodies. The motion is determined numerically with the implicit Runge-Kutta integrator using Gauss-Radau spacings.
The temporal and spatial scales of the onset of two types of substorm events are investigated. These substorms were cases where the expansion onset had precursor localized auroral activation without significant negative bay enhancement, that is, 'pseudobreakup'. High-resolution energetic particle and magnetic field data at synchronous orbit are used for the analysis together with auroral and magnetic field data simultaneously taken from ground-based instrumentation. The auroral structure following the pseudobreakup significantly resembled the major expansion aurora, except in its spatial scale. Typical magnetospheric onset signatures such as tail current diversion, dipolarization, and injection were observed associated with some of the pseudobreakups. The major expansion, on the other hand, consisted of a number of rather localized injections and expansions, each of which had timescales of 2-8 min, a comparable timescale to that of pseudobreakups. This study shows that there does not appear to be any phenomenological differences between pseudobreakups and major expansion onsets. The major difference between pseudobreakups and major expansion onsets would be the number of occurrences, as well as the intensity and the scale size of the magnetospheric source.
In order to understand the global structure, dynamics, and physical and chemical processes occurring in the upper atmospheres, exospheres, and ionospheres of the Earth, the other planets, comets and planetary satellites and their interactions with their outer particles and fields environs, it is often necessary to address the fundamentally non-equilibrium aspects of the physical environment. These are regions where complex chemistry, energetics, and electromagnetic field influences are important. Traditional approaches are based largely on hydrodynamic or magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) formulations and are very important and highly useful. However, these methods often have limitations in rarefied physical regimes where the molecular collision rates and ion gyrofrequencies are small and where interactions with ionospheres and upper neutral atmospheres are important. At the University of Michigan we have an established base of experience and expertise in numerical simulations based on particle codes which address these physical regimes. The Principal Investigator, Dr. Michael Combi, has over 20 years of experience in the development of particle-kinetic and hybrid kinetichydrodynamics models and their direct use in data analysis. He has also worked in ground-based and space-based remote observational work and on spacecraft instrument teams. His research has involved studies of cometary atmospheres and ionospheres and their interaction with the solar wind, the neutral gas clouds escaping from Jupiter s moon Io, the interaction of the atmospheres/ionospheres of Io and Europa with Jupiter s corotating magnetosphere, as well as Earth s ionosphere. This report describes our progress during the year. The contained in section 2 of this report will serve as the basis of a paper describing the method and its application to the cometary coma that will be continued under a research and analysis grant that supports various applications of theoretical comet models to understanding the inner comae of comets (grant NAGS- 13239 from the Planetary Atmospheres program).
A strong solar wind pressure pulse triggered the magnetic storm on September 7, 2017. Near the end of September 7, the z-component of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF Bz) dropped from 9 to -10 nT in 30 min. The IMF Bz remained at the level of -10 nT for 2 hours and then had another rapid drop to -31 nT in 30 min. The sudden plunge of IMF Bz and the associated strong convection electric field stirred up the storm main phase with Dst falling from 0 to -122 nT from 2200 UT on September 7 to 0200 UT on the 8th. Severe plasmasphere erosion was observed on September 8 by multiple spacecraft, such as the Van Allen Probes and the Arase satellite. In this study, we examine the fate of the eroded plasmasphere particles during this event by model simulation as well as satellite data analysis. The simulation tool we use is the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF)/Block-Adaptive Tree Solarwind Roe-type Upwind Scheme (BATS-R-US) model coupled with the Comprehensive Inner Magnetosphere-Ionosphere (CIMI) model. One of the distinctive capabilities of the SWMF/BATSRUS-CIMI model is that it treats the cold plasmas in the plasmasphere as a separate fluid in the MHD equations. As a result, the transport and circulation of the plasmasphere fluid in the global magnetosphere can be traced and the impacts of this cold fluid on the global magnetosphere can be evaluated. In this paper, we will show how the drainage plume is formed during the storm and how the plasmasphere fluid is transported to the flank and lobe regions and eventually to the plasma sheet and reenters into the plasmasphere. We will validate our simulation by plasmasphere signatures observed in both the inner and outer magnetosphere.
A strong solar wind pressure pulse triggered the magnetic storm on September 7-8, 2017. Near the end of September 7, the z-component of the IMF Bz dropped from 9 to -10 nT in 30 min and then had another rapid drop to -31 nT in 30 min. The sudden plunge of IMF Bz and the associated strong convection electric field stirred up the storm main phase with Dst falling from 0 to -122 nT from 2200 UT on September 7 to 0200 UT on the 8th. Severe plasmasphere erosion was observed on September 8 by multiple spacecraft, such as the Van Allen Probes and the Arase satellite. In this study, we examine the fate of the eroded plasmasphere particles during this event by model simulation as well as satellite data analysis. The simulation tool we use is the SWMF/BATS-R-US model coupled with the CIMI model. The cold plasmas in the plasmasphere is treated as a separate fluid in the MHD equations. As a result, the transport and circulation of the plasmasphere fluid in the global magnetosphere can be traced and the impacts of this cold fluid on the global magnetosphere can be evaluated. In this paper, we will show how the drainage plume is formed during the storm and how the plasmasphere fluid is transported to the flank and lobe regions and eventually to the plasma sheet and reenters into the inner magnetosphere. We will validate our simulation by plasmasphere signatures observed in both the inner and outer magnetosphere.
An extensive data bank of concurrent measurements of laminar flow (LF), particle concentration, and aircraft charging state was gathered for the first time. From this data bank, 13 flights in the simulated airline service (SAS) portion were analyzed to date. A total of 6.86 hours of data at one-second resolution were analyzed. An extensive statistical analysis, for both leading-edge test articles, shows that there is a significant effect of cloud and haze particles on the extent of laminar flow obtained. Approximately 93 percent of data points simulating LFC flight were obtained in clear air conditions; approximately 7 percent were obtained in cloud and haze. These percentages are consistent with earlier USAF and NASA estimates and results. The Hall laminar flow loss criteria was verified qualitatively. Larger particles and higher particle concentrations have a more marked effect on LF than do small particles. A particle spectrometer of a charging patch are both acceptable as diagnostic indicators of the presence of particles detrimental to laminar flow.
Nephele is a small atmospheric probe mission concept to determine whether the Venus clouds contain organic matter. Nephele complements larger missions that seek to conduct Venus atmospheric analyses, such as DAVINCI, Venera-D, and the Morning Star missions, by directly sampling and analyzing cloud and haze particles. AERACEPT is an aerosol sampling technology designed to minimize the mass, volume, and complexity required for in situ planetary atmosphere characterization. A single aeroshell functions as a combined entry vehicle, descent probe, and instrumented sonde, combining recent advances in thermal protection materials with heritage technology from planetary and airborne science. The velocity of descent drives aerosol through inlets embedded in the aeroshell’s thermal protection material; inertial separation isolates the particles from the gas stream; and the particle capture surface doubles as the analysis substrate. This method can work without heat shield separation, descent control, or active sample handling; these advantages trade against a smaller sample volume, higher risk of sample heating, and shorter time for analysis and data return. AERACEPT further benefits from modeling of the internal and external flow to understand the particle capture efficiency and bias for size and concentration distributions. AERACEPT is well suited for a Venus mission such as Nephele, where a passive descent trajectory is both subsonic over the altitudes of interest and provides sufficient velocity and pressure differential for the particle sizes of interest. A thermal and flow toolchain developed in-house (Traj→ DPLR→ PATO→ openFOAM) was used to model an 80-cm aeroshell with science operations 63–39 km. These models indicate that AERACEPT will provide ~24 µL accumulated sample of particles ≥ 0.2 µm, substantially above the 2 µL threshold requirement. The worst-case particle heating will be ~14 K above ambient, for the smallest particles at the lowest altitude; most particles will experience ≤ 1 K rise, at which almost all analytes of interest will be unaffected. Plasma jet testing of a small-scale aeroshell-material inlet was recently conducted to validate the thermal model parameters; wind tunnel testing to validate the flow model parameters is underway.
NASA surface exploration missions have always seen negative effects of dust including the Apollo missions. The astronaut-witnessed unusual behavior of the dust particles that surround the vehicle after engine cutoff has the potential to have more of an influence on surface systems dust loading than the high velocity lunar rocket plume ejecta in the landing process. The levitation and transport of the fine components of regolith on lunar surface has been linked to electrostatic effects and electric field, but so far there is no accurate model considering the inter-particle electrostatic interactions, especially when the particles are charged by rocket plume or other mechanical interactions due to exploration activities. This study is proposed to investigate the dynamics of charged lunar regolith with a discrete element method (DEM) approach focusing on the inter-particle interactions and contact charge transfer. The grain dynamics is coupled with mechanical and electrical particle interactions, and both short- and long-range interactions between spherical particles are incorporated. A tribo-charging model based on instantaneous collisions between particles is adopted and validated by comparing the simulation results to existing experimental data. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to quantify the effects of initial charge, tribo-charging, and E-field on transport of lunar dust based on JSC-1 simulants with a radius of 50 lm. DEM simulations are also conducted in a near realistic lunar environment with the estimations of initial conditions that shows the difference in position and velocity distributions between charged particles and uncharged particles. The results indicate that the charged dust particles have higher dispersion of position and velocity by several orders of magnitude due to electrostatic effects. This provides a potential explanation for the phenomena of the approximately 30 s dust lofting following Apollo Lunar Module landing.
Decades lasting research on the pulsating aurora suggested that this phenomenon forms as result of interactions between the magnetospheric keVs electrons and whistler-mode chorus waves. Arase satellite observation reported the direct evidence for this process confirming in situ measurement of highly correlated precipitated electrons and chorus wave activity. This paper presents the theoretical analysis of this observational event based on the SuperThermal Electron Transport (STET) code that simulates the highly dynamic environment of measured waves and particle data. Specifically, the STET code simulated results confirms the delicate loss-cone observation results of this mission and further reveals the broader energy range of precipitated electron fluxes that was not measurable by Arase satellite.
Protons from the earth's bow shock are observed by the suprathermal ion detector experiment (SIDE) in two regions of the lunar orbit. The dawn region begins at the dawn-side bow-shock crossing and ends about 5 days later, the dusk region begins at about 2 days prior to entering the dusk-side magnetosheath and ends at the inbound bow-shock crossing. Dusk and dawn refer to a terrestrial coordinate system. The dominant contribution to the ion spectra observed by the SIDE in these regions is from particles with energies between about 750 eV/q and 3500 eV/q. Analysis of simultaneous data from the Explorer 35 magnetometer and the SIDE indicates that the observability of bow-shock protons at the lunar distance is dependent on the configuration of the interplanetary magnetic field.
The software manual is presented. The necessary steps required to record, analyze, and reduce Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) data using the Particle Displacement Tracking (PDT) technique are described. The new PDT system is an all electronic technique employing a CCD video camera and a large memory buffer frame-grabber board to record low velocity (less than or equal to 20 cm/s) flows. Using a simple encoding scheme, a time sequence of single exposure images are time coded into a single image and then processed to track particle displacements and determine 2-D velocity vectors. All the PDT data acquisition, analysis, and data reduction software is written to run on an 80386 PC.
With three flights remaining on the manifest, the shuttle impact hypervelocity database has over 2800 entries. The data is currently divided into tables for crew module windows, payload bay door radiators and thermal protection system regions, with window impacts compromising just over half the records. In general, the database provides dimensions of hypervelocity impact damage, a component level location (i.e., window number or radiator panel number) and the orbiter mission when the impact occurred. Additional detail on the type of particle that produced the damage site is provided when sampling data and definitive analysis results are available. The paper will provide details and insights on the contents of the database including examples of descriptive statistics using the impact data. A discussion of post flight impact damage inspection and sampling techniques that were employed during the different observation campaigns will be presented. Future work to be discussed will be possible enhancements to the database structure and availability of the data for other researchers. A related database of ISS returned surfaces that are under development will also be introduced.
With three missions outstanding, the Shuttle Hypervelocity Impact Database has nearly 3000 entries. The data is divided into tables for crew module windows, payload bay door radiators and thermal protection system regions, with window impacts compromising just over half the records. In general, the database provides dimensions of hypervelocity impact damage, a component level location (i.e., window number or radiator panel number) and the orbiter mission when the impact occurred. Additional detail on the type of particle that produced the damage site is provided when sampling data and definitive analysis results are available. Details and insights on the contents of the database including examples of descriptive statistics will be provided. Post flight impact damage inspection and sampling techniques that were employed during the different observation campaigns will also be discussed. Potential enhancements to the database structure and availability of the data for other researchers will be addressed in the Future Work section. A related database of returned surfaces from the International Space Station will also be introduced.