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General

This spacecraft was funded by the German Ministry for Research and Technology (BMFT) and built by the Max-Planck-Institut für extraterrestrische Physik, Garching (MPE). It carried: (i) a range of instruments to measure the particles and fields in the plasma environment of near-Earth space (see list below); and (ii) a number of chemical release containers which could be ejected from the spacecraft and then injected to release ion tracers (lithium or barium) into the plasma environment. The spacecraft was spin-stabilised with an axis at initially 0 and later 90 degrees to the ecliptic plane and a period of approximately 4.5 seconds.

Overall details of the spacecraft and of the data handling are available in the following papers:

• B Häusler et al., The AMPTE IRM spacecraft, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, GE-23(3), May 1985, 192-201.
• O H Bauer et al., The AMPTE IRM science data center, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, GE-23(3), May 1985, 216-220.