Earth’s upper atmosphere above 500 km altitude constantly loses charged particles to outer space in a process called ionospheric outflow. This outflow is important for the dynamics of the near-Earth space environment (“space weather”) yet is poorly understood on a global scale. A mission is needed to observe the global patterns of ionospheric outflow and its relation to space weather driving conditions. The science objectives of such a mission could include not only the reconstruction of global outflow patterns but also the relation of these patterns to geomagnetic activity and the spatial and temporal nature of outflow composition. A study is presented to show that four well-placed spacecraft would be sufficient for reasonable outflow reconstructions.
Liemohn, M. W., Jörg-Micha Jahn, Raluca Ilie, Natalia Y. Ganushkina, Daniel T. Welling, Heather Elliott, Meghan Burleigh, Kaitlin Doublestein, Stephanie Colon-Rodriguez, Pauline Dredger, & Philip Valek (2024). Reconstruction analysis of global ionospheric outflow patterns. Journal of Geophysical Research Space Physics, 129, e2023JA032238. https://doi/org/10.1029/2024JA032238
We sampled the near-Earth plasma sheet using data from the NASA Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions During Substorms mission. For the observations of the plasma sheet, we used corresponding interplanetary observations using the OMNI database. We used these data to develop a data-driven model that predicts plasma sheet electron flux from upstream solar wind variations. The model output data are included in this work, along with code for analyzing the model performance and producing figures used in the related publication. and Data files are included in hdf5 and Python pickle binary formats; scripts included are set up for use of Python 3 to access and process the pickle binary format data.
Swiger, B. M., Liemohn, M. W., & Ganushkina, N. Y. (2020). Improvement of Plasma Sheet Neural Network Accuracy With Inclusion of Physical Information. Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, 7. https://doi.org/10.3389/fspas.2020.00042
