NSSDCA ID: SPMS-00160
Availability: At NSSDC, Ready for Offline Distribution (or Staging if Digital)
Time span: 1981-08-15 to 1983-02-16
These two CD disks contain half-second resolution magnetic and electric field vectors from the MAG-B and VEFI experiments on the Dynamics Explorer 2 (DE-2) spacecraft. The data span the DE-2 period of operations from August 15, 1981 to February 16, 1983. The data are in (IBM/PC-) binary form. An ASCII version is available as a separate data set (81-070B-01F/-02I) on four CD disks. MS-DOS compatible software is available for the binary version to plot and retrieve ASCII data subsets. The menu-driven program provides also access to a magnetic field model (to compare with the measurements) and to the spacecraft position in Corrected Geomagnetic (CGM) coordinates and other coordinate systems. The software can be obtained from NSSDC on floppy disk and via anonymous FTP from nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov in directory CDROM/SOFTWARE/DOS. Both versions contain ASCII files of IMP-8, ISEE-1,2 and 3 data, OMNI database, and AE indices for the DE-2 period. The data set contains the three components of the magnetic field (Bx, By, and Bz in spacecraft coordinates) and two components of the electric field (Ex and Ey; Ez was not measured due to a boom deployment failure) and the following orbit information: model magnetic field, altitude, latitude, longitude, magnetic local time and invariant latitude. The DE-2 orbit is such that the spacecraft coordinate system roughly coincides with a topographic North-East-Vertical coordinate system; differences are smaller than a few degrees. For users who would prefer the vector components in a true North-East-Vertical coordinate system, transformation matrices are provided at 5 s intervals on a separate CD disk (81-070B-00H); this disk also includes the final part of the ASCII version data set. The MAG-B and VEFI experiments and data sets are further described in the *.SFD files which are included on the disks. These averaged data sets were generated by the PI-teams from the original 1/16 s VEFI and MAG-B merged data base, which is also archived at NSSDC on 8mm tapes (81-070B-01D/-02G).
Questions and comments about this data collection can be directed to: Mr. Robert M. Candey
Name | Role | Original Affiliation | |
---|---|---|---|
Dr. James A. Slavin | Data Provider | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | slavin@lepjas.gsfc.nasa.gov |
Dr. Thomas L. Aggson | Data Provider | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | |
Dr. Natalia E. Papitashvili | Data Provider | NASA Goddard Space Flight Center | Natasha.Papitashvili@gsfc.nasa.gov |