The Pioneer Venus Orbiter Plasma Wave Investigation

The Pioneer Venus plasma wave instrument has a selfcontained balanced electric dipole (effective length = 0.75 m) and a 4-channel spectrum analyzer (30-percent bandwidth filters with center frequencies at 100 Hz, 730 Hz, 5.4 kHz, and 30 kHz). The channels are continuously active and the highest Orbiter telemetry rate (2048 bps) yields 4 spectral scans/s. The total mass of 0.55 kg includes the electronics, the antenna, and the antenna deployment mechanism. This report contains a brief description of the instrument design and a discussion of the in-flight performance.