Solar Wind Experiment (SWE) on WIND

The main purpose of the Wind spacecraft is to measure the incoming solar wind, magnetic fields and particles, although early on it will also observe the Earth's foreshock region. Wind, together with Geotail, Polar, SOHO, and Cluster projects, constitute a cooperative scientific satellite project designated the International Solar Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) program which aims at gaining improved understanding of the physics of solar terrestrial relations. The Solar Wind Experiment (SWE) is a collaborative effort of Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), University of New Hampshire (UNH), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The WIND SWE (Solar Wind Experiment) instrument includes 2 Faraday cup ion detectors provided by the MIT Center for Space Research. The Faraday cup detectors were activated on 12 November 1994, and have operated perfectly since then. The Faraday cups provide measurements of the solar wind protons and alpha particles at energy/charge up to 8 keV, and MIT is responsible for analysis of the Faraday cup data. SWE plots and data are available from MIT: http://web.mit.edu/space/www/wind/wind_data.html and from the Polar-Wind-Geotail (PWG) Data Archive (ftp://pwgdata.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/00readme.html) and at the NSSDC CDAWeb (http://cdaweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/cdaweb/) Solar wind proton and alpha particle parameters are available at full 92-sec resolution from NSSDC's ftp site: ftp://nssdcftp.gsfc.nasa.gov/spacecraft_data/wind/plasma_swe/2-min/