Abstract
Abstract. The successful launch of the Swedish microsatellite Astrid-2 in December 1998 began a new era of auroral research, with advanced microprobes of 30 kg or less used as research tools. Innovative technologies and low-mass solutions were used for the sensors and deployment systems to allow a fairly complete set of scientific instruments within the 10 kg allocated for the scientific payload. A newly developed wire boom deployment system proved to function excellently. During its seven month lifetime Astrid-2 collected more than 26 Gbytes of high-quality data of auroral electric and magnetic fields, and auroral particle and plasma characteristics from approximately 3000 orbits at an inclination of 83° and an altitude of about 1000 km. Scientific results cover a broad range of topics, from the physics of energization of auroral particles to how the magnetosphere responds to the energy input from the solar wind and global magnetic field modelling. The fulfilment of both the technological and the scientific mission objectives has opened entirely new possibilities to carry out low-budget multipoint measurements in near-Earth space.Key words. Ionosphere (auroral ionosphere; instruments and techniques) – Magnetospheric physics (auroral phenomena)
Highlights
As a continuation of the successful Swedish small-satellite programme, which produced Viking, 1986 (Hultqvist, 1990) and Freja, 1992 (Lundin et al, 1994a, b), a microsatellite programme was embarked upon in 1993
Astrid-2 carried a much more comprehensive payload than Astrid-1, requiring a longer development time but still within a very low budget ( 2.5 MUSD including all costs for the satellite platform, launch, and mission operations but excluding costs for instrument development and data analysis)
A new wire boom deployment mechanism, with a total weight of less than two kilograms, including four probes and wire booms, was developed to enable electric field measurements on Astrid-2 (Hellman, 1996). It is further discussed in the EMMA electric and magnetic field instrument description
Summary
As a continuation of the successful Swedish small-satellite programme, which produced Viking, 1986 (Hultqvist, 1990) and Freja, 1992 (Lundin et al, 1994a, b), a microsatellite programme was embarked upon in 1993. The first microsatellite in the Astrid series, Astrid-1, was launched in January 1995, carrying an energetic neutral particle imager as its main payload. Astrid-2 carried a much more comprehensive payload than Astrid-1, requiring a longer development time but still within a very low budget ( 2.5 MUSD including all costs for the satellite platform, launch, and mission operations but excluding costs for instrument development and data analysis). In addition to its scientific objective, Astrid-2 had a technological objective, namely to demonstrate the feasibility of microsatellites for auroral research. Astrid-2 was launched as a piggy-back on a Kosmos-3M launcher from Plesetsk, Russia (62.8◦ N, 40.3◦ E) on 10 December 1998 It was placed in a circular 83◦ inclination orbit at 1000 km altitude. Astrid-2 operated for about seven months until 24 July 1999, and provided about 26 Gigabytes of data from over 3000 polar orbits
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