ITM data newly e-accessible, new functionality for OGO data

By Dieter Bilitza

Several new and older Ionspheric/Thermospheric/Mesospheric (ITM) data sets have been recently added to NSSDC's online archive at nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov (SNOE, BE-B, DME-A, Alouette-2, AEROS-A, and ISIS-1; see article in last NSSDC News). In addition densities of seven ion species measured by the OGO 6 Bennett ion mass spectrometer (BIMS) are now online for the 1969-1970 period. All, except the SNOE data, were promoted to online accessibility in the framework of a NASA/OSS Applied Information Systems Research Program (AISRP) grant.

NSSDC's FTPBrowser interface lets user plot, browse, and subset these data sets (all except SNOE). The main plotting capability included so far is standard time-series plotting of user-selected parameters. The interface was recently enhanced to include filtering options (for including or excluding data based on values of any parameters included in the data set) and scatter plots and linear regression fits (between any two user-selected parameters). This will allow users to investigate online the interrelationship between different parameters and the dependency on specific geophysical conditions. Of the ITM data, this extended capability has been applied to the OGO 6 BIMS data so far.