Electron density at the Alouette orbit

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Alouette topside soundings recorded at Stanford University have been used to determine the diurnal, seasonal, and latitudinal variations of electron density at the orbit of the satellite (∼1000 km) over a wide range of latitudes. The electron density is larger in summer than in winter by a factor of approximately 2 at the level of the satellite. The derived latitudinal distributions of electron density at the base of the exosphere are important to the theory of electron and positive ion distributions in the exosphere discussed in the companion paper by Angerami and Thomas.