Sweeping Langmuir Probe (SLP) of the STORMs Sounding Rocket Mission

On October 30, 2007 NASA launched rocket 36.218 carrying the mission: “Investigation of Mid Latitude Ionospheric Irregularities Associated with Terrestrial Weather Systems” also known as the STORMS Mission. The rocket was launched from Wallops Island, Virginia (37.95◦ N, 284.53◦ E, 67.5◦ dip angle) at twelve minutes past local midnight. It flew along an azimuth of 114◦ and reached apogee near 394 km. The rocket payload had a suite of instruments from Utah State University/Space Dynamic Lab (USU/SDL) and University of Texas, Dallas (UTD), for making in-situ electron density, wind and electric field measurements.

The Sweeping Langmuir Probe or SLP was one of the instruments of the rocket payload and built by Utah State University. It operated in 2 modes: (1) Fixed mode, during which the bias voltage to the instrument was fixed at 3V , (2) Sweeping mode, during which the bias voltage applied to the probe was swept through a voltage range periodically. There was 19 such sweeps made by the instrument through the entire trajectory of the rocket and during each of these 19 sweeps the bias voltage was swept from -1V to 3 V in 1024 steps.

In this workbook, we present the current collected by the SLP during each of the 19 sweeps. The voltage measured by one of the four floating potential probes (FPP) is also included along with bias voltage and SLP current to aid in data analysis of the SLP current.

Each sheet of the workbook contains data from one of 19 sweeps of SLP.