1. The ELFIN Mission
- Author
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V. Angelopoulos, A. Flemming, M. R. Capitelli, C. L. Russell, J. King, Eric Grimes, R. Caron, M. J. Lawson, A. Palla, Susmit Jha, K. Hector, S. R. Sundin, A. Subramanian, Drew Turner, L. Bingley, A. Gilbert, M. Cliffe, Xiao-Jia Zhang, Yuri Shprits, R. Castro, E. Tsai, A. Zarifian, Ian Fox, Richard E. Wirz, Andrei Runov, C. E. Pedersen, A. Tan, C. Wilkins, A. Norris, B. Hesford, E. McKinney, C. Wong, E. Rye, Catherine E. Costello, N. Adair, D. Depe, R. Krieger, R. Rozario, C. Shaffer, Emmanuel Masongsong, J. Mao, J. B. Blake, N. Kang, M. Wasden, K. Colton, Robert J. Strangeway, D. Leneman, M. Allen, Wen Li, B. W. Domae, R. Yap, W. Greer, M. Chung, Anton Artemyev, A. J. Villegas, K. Lian, G. Chao, M. Arreola-Zamora, D. Hinkley, M. Nuesca, S. Yamamoto, J. P. Miller, A. Gildemeister, G. Wing, W. Turner, Jiang Liu, P. Cruce, V. A. Sergeev, A. Gonzalez, D. Branchevsky, N. Chung, J. Asher, M. Anderson, J. Artinger, R. Seaton, L. Fitzgibbon, G. Y. Zhang, Z. Qu, E. Xie, D. M. Frederick, S. Eldin, and E. S. Y. Park
- Subjects
Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors ,010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences ,Van Allen radiation belts ,Magnetosphere ,Electron ,Astrophysics ,01 natural sciences ,7. Clean energy ,Physics - Geophysics ,Physics - Space Physics ,Special Communication ,Particle precipitation ,physics.plasm-ph ,physics.ins-det ,010303 astronomy & astrophysics ,Physics ,CubeSat ,Fluxgate magnetometer ,Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) ,Orbital period ,physics.geo-ph ,physics.space-ph ,Van Allen radiation belt ,Physics::Space Physics ,symbols ,EMIC ,Ionosphere ,Astronomical and Space Sciences ,FOS: Physical sciences ,Electron precipitation ,Astronomy & Astrophysics ,Energetic particle detector ,symbols.namesake ,0103 physical sciences ,0105 earth and related environmental sciences ,Scattering ,electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves ,Astronomy and Astrophysics ,Auroral ,Physics - Plasma Physics ,Space Physics (physics.space-ph) ,Geophysics (physics.geo-ph) ,Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph) ,Space and Planetary Science ,Loss cone ,UCLA ,Pitch angle scattering ,Satellite - Abstract
The Electron Loss and Fields Investigation with a Spatio-Temporal Ambiguity-Resolving option (ELFIN-STAR, or simply: ELFIN) mission comprises two identical 3-Unit (3U) CubeSats on a polar (~93deg inclination), nearly circular, low-Earth (~450 km altitude) orbit. Launched on September 15, 2018, ELFIN is expected to have a >2.5 year lifetime. Its primary science objective is to resolve the mechanism of storm-time relativistic electron precipitation, for which electromagnetic ion cyclotron (EMIC) waves are a prime candidate. From its ionospheric vantage point, ELFIN uses its unique pitch-angle-resolving capability to determine whether measured relativistic electron pitch-angle and energy spectra within the loss cone bear the characteristic signatures of scattering by EMIC waves or whether such scattering may be due to other processes. Pairing identical ELFIN satellites with slowly-variable along-track separation allows disambiguation of spatial and temporal evolution of the precipitation over minutes-to-tens-of-minutes timescales, faster than the orbit period of a single low-altitude satellite (~90min). Each satellite carries an energetic particle detector for electrons (EPDE) that measures 50keV to 5MeV electrons with deltaE/E, Submitted to Space Science Reviews April 2020. 51 pages, 7 tables, 21 figures
- Published
- 2020
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