Characterization of Ionosphere-Thermosphere Coupling from the VISIONS-2 Mission ...

VISIONS-2 was a NASA sounding rocket mission consisting of two payloads flown on December 7th, 2018 from Svalbard, Norway. On board the first Visions-2 payload, electrostatic analyzers gathered data on low-energy ions throughout the flight. Existing in situ studies of the mechanics of ionosphere-the...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Wilson, Kieran
Format: Master Thesis
Language:English
Published: Graduate Studies 2023
Subjects:
VISIONS-2
Ionosphere-Thermosphere Coupling
Electrostatic Analyzer
Sounding Rocket
Ion Drift
Neutral Wind
Electricity and Magnetism
Geophysics
FOS Earth and related environmental sciences
Atmospheric Science
Fluid and Plasma
Svalbard
Online Access:https://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/41728
https://prism.ucalgary.ca/handle/1880/116886
Description
Summary:VISIONS-2 was a NASA sounding rocket mission consisting of two payloads flown on December 7th, 2018 from Svalbard, Norway. On board the first Visions-2 payload, electrostatic analyzers gathered data on low-energy ions throughout the flight. Existing in situ studies of the mechanics of ionosphere-thermosphere coupling within the undersampled E-region are limited. The present study aims to bolster these existing findings by characterizing the transition from collisionless to collision-dominated ionosphere-thermosphere interaction peaking near 120 km altitude, estimating the altitude at which friction balances the Lorentz force on ionospheric ions. For the purposes of this study, ion drift is estimated at regular altitude intervals throughout the transition region using two-dimensional images gathered by the electrostatic analyzers. In the absence of thermospheric wind measurements and low-altitude electric field measurements, the ion drift variation with altitude is used as a proxy measurement for neutral ...

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