Creating unstable velocity-space distributions with barium injections

Large Debye lengths relative to detector dimensions and the absence of confining walls makes space an attractive laboratory for studying fundamental theories of plasma instabilities. However, natural space plasmas are rarely found displaced from equilibrium enough to permit isolation and diagnosis of the controlling parameters and driving conditions. Furthermore, any plasma or field response to the departure from equilibrium can be masked by noise in the natural system. Active experiments provide a technique for addressing the chicken or egg dilemma. Early thermite barium releases were generally conducted at low altitudes from sounding rockets to trace electric fields passively or to study configuration-space instabilities. One can also study velocity-space instabilities with barium releases. Neutral barium vapor releases wherein a typical speed greatly exceeds the thermal speed can be used to produce barium ion velocity-space distributions that should be subject to a number of microinstabilities. We examine the ion velocity-space distributions resulting from barium injections from orbiting spacecraft and shaped-charges

Possible satellite-based observations of the 1997 Leonid meteoroids

The Block IIA GPS satellites are equipped with a sensor designed to detect electromagnetic transients. Several phenomena will produce triggers in this sensor. They include earth-based electromagnetic transients such as lightning and two space-based phenomena--deep dielectric discharge and meteoroid or hyper-velocity micro-gram particle impact (HMPI). Energetic electrons in the GPS environment cause the deep dielectric charging. HMPIs cause triggers through the transient electric fields generated by the ejecta plasma. During the 1997 Leonid passage the energetic particle fluxes were very low. In the presence of such low fluxes the typical median trigger rate is 20 per minute with a standard deviation of about 20 per minute. Between 0800 UT and 1200 UT on November 17, 1997, the sensor on a specially configured satellite observed trigger rates more than 10 sigma above the nominal median rate. Sensors on other Block IIA GPS satellites also observed excess triggers during November. Detection is enhanced when the sensor antenna is oriented into the Leonid radiant. While many questions persist the authors feel that it is likely that the excess events during the November interval were caused by the close approach of the satellites to the Leonid meteoroid path

Lagopedo: two F-region ionospheric depletion experiments

A significant depletion of ionospheric plasma was produced by a chemical release experiment in the F-layer ionosphere over Hawaii. The results of measurements of the hole produced in the ionospheric plasma are reported. (GHT