Mission Support for the Communications/Navigation Outage Foreacst System

Abstract

This is a project to provide mission support for the Communication/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) through ground-based radar observations of background ionospheric parameters and of equatorial spread F (ESF) events from the Jicamarca Radio Observatory near Lima, Peru. A new theory regarding ionospheric preconditioning and the role of shear flow in destabilizing the postsunset equatorial ionosphere has emerged from C/NOFS pre-launch preparations at Jicamarca. An approximate, closed-form expression for the growth rate highlighting its dependence on background ionospheric parameters has been derived. The instability is expected to operate in regions of strong retrograde plasma motion% where the background vertical density gradient is steep. Evidence that the instability occurs prior to the onset of conventional interchange instabilities comes from the periodic structure of precursor bottom-type scattering layers seen in radar imaging data.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 21, 2005
Accession Number
ADA444993

Entities

People

  • D. L. Hysell

Organizations

  • Cornell University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Space

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Force Research Laboratories
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Cartesian Coordinates
  • Contracts
  • Doppler Effect
  • Flow
  • Government Procurement
  • Governments
  • Imaging Techniques
  • Instability
  • Ionosphere
  • Radar Imaging
  • Scattering
  • Shear Flow
  • Space Weather
  • Spacecraft

Readers

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics.
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics