Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Troim, J..
The cluster spacecraft are instrumented with ion emitters for charge neutralization. The emitters produce indium ions at 6 keV. The ion current is adjusted in a feedback loop with instruments measuring the spacecraft potential. The system is based on the evaporation of indium in the apex field of a needle. The design of the active spacecraft potential control instruments, and the ion emitters is presented.
The Polar 5 electric field results are reviewed, and the transients from Polar 3 are presented. The phenomena are discussed from the standpoint of space charge. On the basis of the Polar 5 results, the large magnitude of the electric field from Polar 3 is seen as indicating that the observed space charge was probably within a few km or less of the payload. Reference is made to Cole's prediction (1960) that charges in the ionosphere would reach equilibrium with a time constant of the order of a few microsec. The processes involved in the two cases presented here require time constants of the order of ms. If the sheath dimensions are taken to be between 50 and 100 m, which is not considered unreasonable in view of the electric field measurements, then a qualitative estimate of the neutralization time would be the transit time for ions across the sheath. Since the kinetic velocity of a 1-eV proton is approximately 14 m/s, it would traverse the distance in 4 to 8 ms, assuming freedom of movement across magnetic field lines. This is the order of the decay times observed on Polar 5.
The sounding rocket, Polar 5, carrying a 10 keV electron accelerator in a mother-daughter configuration and other diagnostic instruments, was launched into a slightly disturbed ionosphere with weak auroral activity on February 1, 1976 from Northern Norway to study VLF wave phenomena. The rocket trajectory crossed two auroral regions: one, between 86 and 111 s flight time, and a secondary region between 230 and 330 s. The daughter, carrying the accelerator, was separated axially from the mother in a forward direction at an altitude of 90 km. The VLF experiment, carried by the mother payload, recorded both electromagnetic and electrostatic waves. The receiving antenna was an electric dipole, 0.3 m tip-to-tip, oriented 90 degrees to the rocket spin axis. The onboard particle detector recorded increased electron fluxes in the two auroral regions. A double peaked structure was observed in the fluxes of 4-5 and 12-27 keV electrons within the northern auroral form. The number density of thermal plasma varied during the flight, with maximum density within the main auroral region. To the north of this aurora a slow, steady decrease in the density was observed, with no enhancement in the region of the second aurora.
Observations of waves stimulated by artificial injection inside an auroral arc by an electron accelerator mounted on the POLAR 5 sounding rocket are presented. The accelerator produced a pulsed electron beam with currents up to 130 mA and energies up to 10 keV; emissions after the end of beam injection were generated by perturbations in the ambient plasma near the accelerator during beam injection. These emissions were independent of the electron beam direction along the geomagnetic field. The high frequency emission observed after beam injection correlated with the passage through an auroral arc; the low frequency emissions after beam injection were concentrated in two bands below the lower hybrid frequency.
The paper reports the results of energetic auroral electron and vector electric field measurements taken near and above a discrete auroral form and discusses their electrodynamic implications. Height-integrated Hall and Pedersen conductivities are computed in a quantitative fashion along the rocket payload trajectory. These conductivities, together with the electric fields, are used to describe the local auroral electrojet current system and to demonstrate an inverse relationship between the local electric field intensity and the height-integrated Pedersen conductivity. An analysis is presented of the divergence of both the electric field and the horizontal current as an effort to infer space charge densities and magnetic-field-aligned electrical currents near an auroral arc.
HF wave propagation experiments were conducted on Mother-Daughter rockets in the polar ionosphere. Swept frequency transmissions from the Mother, nominally covering the range from 0.5 to 5 MHz in both CW and pulse modes, are received by the Daughter. In the most recent rocket of the series, the Mother also contained an AC electric field spectrometer covering the frequency range from 10 Hz to 100 kHz in four decade bands. The low frequency response of the ionosphere with respect to waves emitted from the onboard HF transmitter is examined.
The report presents observations obtained in a swept frequency experiment conducted in a mother-daughter rocket flight at auroral latitudes. The discussion is essentially restricted to the possible interpretation of the experimental signal structures noted at and in the vicinity of a resonance frequency where signal components apparently are generated by nonlinear mechanisms. Various resonance frequencies have been considered in attempts to identify this multichannel response frequency. It is concluded that of all the possibilities invoked, the best consistency is provided by identifying the frequency concerned with the cone resonance frequency demonstrated experimentally in the case of a laboratory plasma by Fisher and Gould (1971).
Rocket measurements showing removal of electrons above mesopause in summer at high latitude
Rocket measurement of quiet D-region electron number density profiles near sunrise
Electron density profiles for quiet day mid- latitude d region using nike-apache sounding rockets
Rocket measurement of electron density in low ionosphere
Midlatitude electron density profile in d region indicating nitric oxide ionization by lyman alpha radiation