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Subsections

• Magnetometer
• Plasma instrument
• Plasma wave spectrometer
• Ion time-of-flight spectrometer

Instruments

Magnetometer

This was supplied by the University of Braunschweig. It was a boom-mounted vector fluxgate measuring with a sampling rate of 32 vectors per second and an accuracy of about 0.1 nT.

Details are available in the following paper:

• H Lühr et al., The IRM fluxgate magnetometer, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, GE-23(3), May 1985, 259-261.

Plasma instrument

This was supplied by the Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik. The instrument used two separate sensors to measure the three-dimensional ion and electron distributions - over the energy range from 20 eV/q to 40 keV/q for ions and over 15 eV to 30 keV for electrons. It could be commanded to operate in a variety of modes. Full details are available in the following paper:

• G Paschmann et al., The plasma instrument for AMPTE IRM, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, GE-23(3), May 1985, 262-266.

Plasma wave spectrometer

This instrument consisted of hardware provided by the University of Iowa, the Aerospace Corporation, and the Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik. This instrument used a 47 metre tip-to-tip probe to measure electric fields over the frequency range from DC to 5.6 MHz and a boom-mounted search coil to measure magnetic fields over the frequency range 30Hz to 1.5 MHz. Full details are available in the following paper:

• B Häusler et al., The plasma wave instrument on board the AMPTE IRM satellite, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, GE-23(3), May 1985, 267-273.

Ion time-of-flight spectrometer

This instrument, known as SULEICA (Suprathermal Energy Ionic Charge Analyser), was supplied by the Max-Planck Institut für extraterrestrische Physik. It used a combination of electrostatic deflection, time-of-flight measurement and energy analysis in solid-state detectors. From these it was able to distinguish the charge and mass of all major ions from hydrogen through to iron for ion energies between 5 and 270 keV/q. Full details are available in the following paper:

• E Möbius et al., The time-of-flight spectrometer SULEICA for ions of energy range 5-270 kev/charge on AMPTE IRM, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, GE-23(3), May 1985, 274-279.

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