Abstract
The gas kinetic method (GKM) obtains the Maxwellian velocity distributions of ionospheric plasma and thermospheric species (e.g. O +, O +2, O and N 2) from in situ measurements of energy–angle distributions of the air stream entering an orbiting spectrometer. Referenced to the spectrometer ram axis, measurements based on the GKM yield the ion-drift or neutral wind vector , the ion or neutral temperature T, and ion or neutral number density n with sensitivities that may be implemented with present technologies for energy–angle spectrometers, i.e. the CubeSat WINCS spectrometers, designed to measure ion-drift and wind vectors together with ion and neutral temperatures, and composition.
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