SSIES
SSIES, or the Special Sensors-Ions, Electrons, and Scintillation thermal plasma analysis package is a suite of instruments built by the William B. Hanson center for Space Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas and flown on a number of the DMSP satellites. SSIESS includes a Retarding Potential Analyzer (RPA), and Ion Drift meter (IDM), a scintillation meter, and a Langmuir probe A Langmuir probe is a device used to determine the electron temperature, electron density, and electric potential of a plasma. It works by inserting one or more electrodes into a plasma, with a constant or time-varying electric potential between .... ReferencesUTD SSIES Homepage Space science experiments {{US-spacecraft-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Defense Meteorological Satellite Program
The Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) monitors meteorological, oceanographic, and solar-terrestrial physics for the United States Department of Defense. The program is managed by the United States Space Force with on-orbit operations provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The (originally classified) mission of the satellites was revealed in March 1973. They provide cloud cover imagery from polar orbits that are Sun-synchronous at nominal altitude of . History During the 1960s, one of the most important projects that the United States civil space program was involved in dealt with meteorology and weather forecasting. Unbeknownst to many, the U.S. military services were also starting up a weather satellite program. This program, the DMSP, would relay important weather and climate data to the military for more effective operations. From the onset of the DMSP program, knowledge of its existence was limited to "need-to-know" person ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Langmuir Probe
A Langmuir probe is a device used to determine the electron temperature, electron density, and electric potential of a plasma. It works by inserting one or more electrodes into a plasma, with a constant or time-varying electric potential between the various electrodes or between them and the surrounding vessel. The measured currents and potentials in this system allow the determination of the physical properties of the plasma. ''I-V'' characteristic of the Debye sheath The beginning of Langmuir probe theory is the ''I–V'' characteristic of the Debye sheath, that is, the current density flowing to a surface in a plasma as a function of the voltage drop across the sheath. The analysis presented here indicates how the electron temperature, electron density, and plasma potential can be derived from the ''I–V'' characteristic. In some situations a more detailed analysis can yield information on the ion density (n_i), the ion temperature T_i, or the electron energy distribution f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |