Sciences and Exploration Directorate

Hardware

VEFI Vector Electric Field Investigation

VEFI is a suite that consists of 6 electric field probes, a Langmuir probe, a fluxgate magnetometer, and a lightning detector. (right) 6 electric field booms and spherical sensors. The DC electric field (3-axis vector) captures data at 16 vectors/2 and with 0.5 mV/m accuracy. The AC electric fields cover a wide range of frequencies from ELF to HF. This instrument has high heritage having flown on the C/NOFS and Dynamic Explorer (DE-2) satellites and numerous sounding rocketss.

VEFI data from C/NOFScan be found on CDAWEB (along with other heliophysics data) and examples and descriptions of the data can be found in some of the many papers using VEFI data which are listed below:

Laakso, H., & Pfaff, R. (2023). Fast plasma drifts in the high latitude ionosphere. Geophysical Research Letters, 50, e2023GL103566. https://doi.org/10.1029/2023GL103566

Pfaff, R., Kudeki, E., Freudenreich, H., Rowland, D., Larsen, M., & Klenzing, J. (2022). Dual sounding rocket and C/NOFS satellite observations of DC electric fields and plasma density in the equatorial E- and F-region ionosphere at sunset. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 127, e2021JA030191. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JA030191

Pfaff, R., Uribe, P., Fourre, R. et al. The Vector Electric Field Investigation (VEFI) on the C/NOFS Satellite. Space Sci Rev 217, 85 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-021-00859-y

Chen, L., Pfaff, R., Heelis, R., Boardsen, S., & Xia, Z. (2020). Ion cyclotron resonant absorption lines in ELF hiss power spectral density in the low-latitude ionosphere. Geophysical Research Letters, 47, e2019GL086315. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL086315

Jacobson, A. R., Holzworth, R. H., Pfaff, R., & Heelis, R. (2020). Low-latitude whistler-wave spectra and polarization from VEFI and CINDI payloads on C/NOFS satellite. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 125, e2019JA027074. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JA027074

INMS Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer

The INMS and Mini-INMS is a time of flight (ToF) mass spectrometer (thermoinic emission ionization, pre-acceleration gated ToF and ESA, CEM/MCPs) that measures Ion Species in the atmosphere and ionosphere including H+, He+, N+, O+, NO+, O2+ and Neutral Species of H, He, N,O, O2, N2, H2O, and CO2. You can find more information in the presentation from the Proceedings of the 2nd Planetary CubeSat Science Symposium in Greenbelt MD (Vol. 26) from 2017 and the poster from the GSFC INMS Team shown below

MOSAIC Modular Spectrometer for Atmosphere and Ionosphere Characterization

The MOSAIC instrument (a very interdivisional instrument with team members from both 690 and 670 and led out of 690 by Mehdi Benna) is a Quadrupole Mass Spectrometer : (1) ion source, (2) an analyzer with an ion focusing lens, and (3) an SEM detector which measures Ionosphere and Thermosphere neutral and ion density, composition, temp, wind, Neutrals & ions (He, O, N, N2, NO, O2, H+, O+, N+, N2+, NO+, and O2+). You can read about MoSAIC's use in understanding the Martian atomospheric system in their white paper.

Software and Models

pysat

Python Satellite Data Analysis Toolkit (pysat) is an open source python package used and developed by many in the ITM research community to load and analyse data relevant to ionospheric, thermospheric, mesospheric research, as well as incorporate magnetospheric and solar impacts and data analysis.

You can find pySat at readthedocs

and below are a list of papers about and using pysat:

Stoneback, R. A., Burrell, A. G., Klenzing, J., & Depew, M. D. (2018). PYSAT: Python Satellite Data Analysis Toolkit. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 123, 5271 doi:https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JA025297

Barnum, J., Masson, A., Friedel, R. H. W., Roberts, A., & Thomas, B. A. (2023). Python in Heliophysics Community (PyHC): Current status and future outlook. In Advances in Space Research (Vol. 72, Issue 12, pp. 5636, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2022.10.006

Burrell, A. G., Halford, A., Klenzing, J., Stoneback, R. A., Morley, S. K., Annex, A. M., et al. (2018). Snakes on spaceship aAn overview of Python in heliophysics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, 123, 10,384, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JA025877

Klenzing J, Smith JM, Halford AJ, Huba JD and Burrell AG sami2py (2022)Overview and applications. Front. Astron. Space Sci. 9:1066480. doi: 10.3389/fspas.2022.1066480

Stoneback RA, Burrell AG, Klenzing J and Smith J (2023) The pysat ecosystem. Front. Astron. Space Sci. 10:1119775. doi: 10.3389/fspas.2023.1119775

Smith, J. M., & Klenzing, J. (2022). Growin: Modeling ionospheric instability growth rates. In Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate (Vol. 12, p. 26). EDP Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1051/swsc/2022021

A neutral density radom forest model

Our lab is working with the center for helioanalytics and others to develop machine learning and artificial intelegence models to explore the ITM system and work towards developing tools that may have the potential to become operational and provide actionable information for those impacted by space weather.