Cluster-Salsa EDI: Electron Drift Velocity and Electric Field Measurements

Electron Drift Instrument (EDI) data from the ESA Cluster spacecraft. The dataset includes time series of electron drift velocity and electric field components, ambient electron counts at fixed energies, and overview plots. It was produced by NASA and last updated in March 2026.

Use Cases

• Analyzing electron drift velocity patterns based on the three-component velocity time series.
• Studying electric field variations in the GSE coordinate system based on the corrected field components.
• Investigating ambient electron pitch angle distributions based on counts at 0°, 90°, and 180° angles.
• Creating overview plots of operational parameters based on the 3-hour summaries for a reference spacecraft.

Strengths

• Provides measurements for electron energies between 0.5 and 1.0 keV.
• Includes time series data with different qualities and resolutions at 1-4 seconds.
• Contains ambient electron measurements at a high time resolution of 16 milliseconds.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Primary data files are in binary format, requiring specialized tools for access.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Data collected by the Electron Drift Instrument on the Cluster spacecraft.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 03:30:40.356998; freshness should be verified.