Measurements of the Thermospheric Meridional Wind from the S85-1 Spacecraft.

Abstract

The Upper Atmosphere Composition Spectrometer (UACS) was flown on the Department of Defense Space Test Program mission S85-1. USACS was designed to measure neutral composition, temperature, and the in-track wind component in the lower thermosphere. In the high inclination orbit of S85-1, USACS measured the meridonal component of wind at all but the highest latitudes. While techniques to measure cross-track neutral wind have been successfully demonstrated by other investigators, in situ measurements of the in-track wind component have not been published before. USACS obtained a small but significant set of wind data for two days in July 1984 at altitudes between 200 and 235 km, at local solar times of 10.5 and 22.5 hours. The measured winds compare favorably with published results from ground-based incoherent-scatter radar and Fabry-Perot interferometer experiments as well as with satellite-based cross-track measurements of the meridonal wind. Keywords: Spectrometer, Wind measurements. (jhd)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 20, 1988
Accession Number
ADA198100

Entities

People

  • D. C. Kayser

Organizations

  • The Aerospace Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Altitude
  • Artificial Satellites
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Sets
  • Detectors
  • Electric Fields
  • Electron Beams
  • Fabry Perot Interferometers
  • Grids
  • Ground Based
  • Ground Stations
  • Instrumentation
  • Ion Sources
  • Ionization
  • Ions
  • Measurement
  • Spectrometers

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Marine Ecological Systems Migration
  • Space/Atmospheric Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Satellites