HR: 1340h
AN: SA23A-0304    [Abstracts]
TI: Observations of non-maxwellian plasma in the bottom-type scattering layer precursor to equatorial spread F
AU: * Barjatya, A
EM: arohb@cc.usu.edu
AF: Utah State University, 4120 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322 United States
AU: Swenson, C M
EM: charles.swenson@engineering.usu.edu
AF: Utah State University, 4120 Old Main Hill, Logan, UT 84322 United States
AU: Hysell, D
EM: daveh@geology.cornell.edu
AF: Cornell University, 2122 Snee Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853 United States
AB: The rocket investigation 'Scattering Layer in the Bottomside Equatorial F-region Ionosphere' was part of the NASA EQUIS II campaign. Two salvos of sounding rockets were launched from Roi Namur in Kwajalein on August 7th and 15th of 2004. Each of the salvos consisted of one instrumented and two chemical release payloads. The instrumented rockets were launched westward into equatorial spread F precursor that was first observed from ground using the Altair radar. The instrumented rockets reached an apogee of ~421 km. The instruments consisted of an internally heated Sweeping Langmuir Probe (SLP), a fixed bias DC Probe (DCP), a Plasma Impedance Probe consisting of a Plasma Frequency Probe and a Plasma Sweeping Probe built at Utah State University. The instrument suite also included an Electric Field Probe built by Penn State University. The SLP sweep from -1 V to +5 V is used to derive Electron Energy Distribution Functions (EEDF) which show the presence of non-Maxwellian plasma in the spread F precursor. This paper presents an analysis of the derived EEDF and fits various possible distribution functions to the EEDF.
DE: 0654 Plasmas
DE: 7846 Plasma energization
DE: 7853 Spacecraft/atmosphere interactions
DE: 7894 Instruments and techniques
SC: SPA-Aeronomy [SA]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005