Statistical Properties of Electron Curtain Precipitation Estimated With AeroCube‐6

• Published in: Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics
• Main Authors: Shumko, M., Johnson, A. T., O'Brien, T. P., Turner, D. L., Greeley, A. D., Sample, J. G., Blake, J. B., Blum, L. W., Halford, A. J.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
• Subjects: Research Articles; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7816229/; https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JA028462

Curtain precipitation is a recently discovered stationary, persistent, and latitudinally narrow electron precipitation phenomenon in low Earth orbit. Curtains are observed over consecutive passes of the dual AeroCube‐6 CubeSats while their in‐track lag varied from a fraction of a second to 65 s, with dosimeters that are sensitive to >35‐keV electrons. This study uses the AeroCube‐6 mission to quantify the statistical properties of 1,634 curtains observed over 3 years. We found that many curtains are narrower than 10 km in the latitudinal direction with 90% narrower than 20 km. We examined the geographic, magnetic local time, and geomagnetic dependence of curtains. We found that curtains are observed in the late‐morning and premidnight magnetic local times, with a higher occurrence rate at premidnight, and curtains are observed more often during times of enhanced Auroral Electrojet. We found a few curtains in the bounce loss cone region above the North Atlantic, whose electrons were continuously scattered for at least 6 s. Such observations suggest that continuous curtain precipitation may be a significant loss of >35‐keV electrons from the magnetosphere into the atmosphere. We hypothesize that the curtains observed in the bounce loss cone were accelerated by parallel electric fields, and we show that this mechanism is consistent with the observations.