Remote sensing of the thermosphere, plasmasphere, and exosphere

An instrument package for remotely measuring thermospheric, exospheric, and plasmaspheric structure and composition is described. This instrument will be flown aboard the second test flight of the Black Brant XII rocket, with an expected apogee of approximately 1300 km. A description is given of the experiment package designed for this flight, which consists of a spectrophotometer to measure He I 584 AA, O II 834 AA, O I 989 AA, hydrogen Lyman beta (1025 AA), hydrogen Lyman alpha (1216 AA), and O I 1304 AA transitions, and a photometer to measure the He II 304 AA emission. The He II 304 AA photometer consists of a layered synthetic microstructure (LSM) mirror tuned at 304 AA to focus incidence radiation onto a Channeltron detector. The high altitude to be attained by the rocket is ideally suited to probe the coupling of the various atmospheric regions through the simultaneous measurement of the altitude distributions of several major thermospheric, ionospheric, and exospheric constituents.<
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