As humanity continues its expansion into space, the understanding of the near-Earth space environment has never been more critical. As the ionosphere and thermosphere form the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and outer space, characterization of these regions is critical to understanding geospace. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), launched in 2019, sought to establish the effects of forcing on the ionosphere and thermosphere from below and above, in part by using observations of ultraviolet airglow, which have long been used as a tool for making remote sensing observations of the upper atmosphere. The Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EUV) instrument was included on ICON to measure atmospheric airglow between 54 and 88 nm in order to estimate the density and structure of the ionosphere. In this work, we analyze the EUV observations throughout the ICON mission, characterizing the signal observed at various wavelengths during normal operations and during nadir and lunar calibrations. We use the ICON EUV data to develop the first algorithm for retrieval of neutral densities from EUV airglow. / Doctor of Philosophy / As humanity continues its expansion into space, the understanding of the near-Earth space environment has never been more critical. The neutral (thermosphere) and charged (ionosphere) particles in the upper atmosphere, around the altitude where satellite orbit, play a key role as the boundary between Earth and space. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON), launched in 2019, sought to establish how the ionosphere and thermosphere change over time. It measured the density of particles using light emitted from the atmosphere by chemical reactions (airglow). Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) light is highly energetic, almost as much as X-rays, and the EUV airglow emitted by the atmosphere at certain can be used to detect O^+. In this work, we examine the measurements from the ICON EUV detector at various wavelengths to determine what other particles can be seen. Notably, we find that the measurements contain information about neutral atomic oxygen and molecular nitrogen. We develop a technique for using the EUV airglow brightness to measure the amount of O and N_2, the first of its kind.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/119060 |
| Date | 22 May 2024 |
| Creators | Tuminello Jr, Richard Michael |
| Contributors | Aerospace and Ocean Engineering, England, Scott Leslie, Bailey, Scott M., Shinpaugh, Kevin A., De Sturler, Eric |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ |
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