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Sensors explore the ionosphere


The recently launched ICON satellite is carrying sensor loaded instruments to measure the impact of weather on the ionosphere.


(ICON) satellite will deliver unprecedented information to help scientists investigate how both terrestrial and solar weather impact the ionosphere, the ionised region of Earth’s upper atmosphere. The ICON satellite launched recently from Cape Canaveral, Florida. NRL’s MIGHTI (Michelson


A


Interferometer for Global High- Resolution Thermospheric Imaging) will measure wind and temperature profiles and contribute to a critical data set for scientists as they study how energy and dynamics from the lower atmosphere propagate into the space environment. From its large day-to-day variability to extreme conditions during solar-driven


❱ ❱ Multiple robust sensor systems provide the ICON satellite with the means to understand the workings of the ionosphere


magnetic storms, the ionosphere governs how radio waves propagate and can lead to severe disruptions of radio communications and GPS signals for both the public and the military. Radio signals travel through the ionosphere, or they reflect off it to make them reach past Earth’s horizon for the purposes of communication and long- range radar. “The ionosphere is where Earth ends or where space begins, and we haven’t


studied it nearly enough to fully understand how it works and to make reliable predictions,” said Christoph Englert, lead investigator for MIGHTI. The ionosphere, which overlaps the atmosphere’s mesosphere, thermosphere


and exosphere layers, remains somewhat of a mystery to scientists. This border separating Earth from space lies between 30 and 600 miles above the Earth’s surface and is too high for science balloons to reach, and large parts of the region are too low for traditional satellites to fly in. That’s why NASA wants to explore it from the inside with the ICON satellite,


travelling within the ionosphere at an orbit about 350 miles above the Earth’s surface. As one of four scientific instruments aboard the ICON satellite, MIGHTI’s observations will give scientists a better understanding of how weather from the Earth and Sun affect the motion and structure of the neutral and ionised upper atmosphere. In the years prior to this mission, NRL developed two instruments using similar optical techniques, one for the STS-112 space shuttle mission in 2002 and the other, the SHIMMER instrument, for STPSat-1, launched in 2007. These instruments studied atmospheric chemistry below 60 miles. MIGHTI is a project developed by NRL in Washington, DC and the St Cloud State


University in Minnesota. The broader collaboration within NRL made use of the expertise of researchers across multiple divisions, including Space Science, Spacecraft Engineering, Remote Sensing, Plasma Physics and Marine Meteorology.


28 /// Aerospace Test & Validation Vol 2 No. 2


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US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) instrument aboard NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer


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