Precipitation of Auroral and Ring-Current Particles by Artificial Plasma Injection,
Abstract
Outside the plasmasphere, most of the energy in magnetospherically trapped particles resides in two populations: auroral-energy electrons, and the proton ring current, with single-particle energies from 1 to 50 keV. The ring current contains more energy than all other components of the magnetospherically trapped radiation. It may be possible to precipitate a large fraction of this energy into the ionosphere by injection of a light-ion plasma from a synchronous satellite, which would render the ring current protons unstable to a variety of plasma modes. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 30, 1973
- Accession Number
- AD0755352
Entities
People
- John Cornwall
Organizations
- The Aerospace Corporation