The behavior of the electric and magnetic fields in the upper atmosphere of the Earth is scientifically interesting but difficult to study, since balloons and aircraft are unable to fly high enough to measure it directly. Sounding rockets, which make a one-time flight carrying instruments that measure the environment around them, have been successfully used to study the upper atmosphere. As the rocket flies through the upper atmosphere, it radios down data about the environment. When scientists on the ground use this data to construct a picture of the upper atmosphere, they run into a problem: the fields reported by the rocket change over time, but it is not clear whether this is because these fields are actually changing in time, or just because the rocket has moved to a different place where the fields are different. This inability to determine whether changes are happening in time or space is called the temporal-spatial ambiguity.
This thesis describes the Auroral Spatial Structures Probe (ASSP), a sounding rocket mission that attempts to resolve the temporal-spatial ambiguity by using multiple payloads flying in formation. Several payloads will pass through and measure the same point in space one after another, which will enable us to see how the fields are changing over time.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UTAHS/oai:digitalcommons.usu.edu:etd-4720 |
| Date | 01 May 2014 |
| Creators | Farr, Daniel |
| Publisher | DigitalCommons@USU |
| Source Sets | Utah State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | All Graduate Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact Andrew Wesolek (andrew.wesolek@usu.edu). |
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