DE 1 Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer (RIMS) Low Channel, H+ and He++, and High Channel, He

NASA's DE-1 Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer (RIMS) dataset provides 1-minute resolution measurements of ionospheric plasma. The instrument measured densities, temperatures, and electric potentials for H+, He+, He++, O+, and O++ ions in regions including the ionosphere, plasmasphere, and polar cap. Data collection involved three detector heads with a 55° acceptance angle, operating in distinct high-altitude and low-altitude modes.

Use Cases

• Modeling cold plasma density distribution in the ionosphere and plasmasphere based on described ion measurements.
• Analyzing ion temperature variations in the plasma trough and polar cap from the 0 eV to 45 eV energy range.
• Studying bulk flow velocity changes at boundaries like the plasmapause based on described flow characteristics.
• Investigating ion composition in the 1-u to 32-u mass range from the described perigee mode operations.

Strengths

• Data covers multiple ion species (H+, He+, He++, O+, O++) across distinct space regions.
• Instrument provided high temporal resolution measurements with a 16 ms sampling rate.
• Dataset includes a documented quality criterion for selecting valid data points for fitting.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and file size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect temporal and spatial bias inherent to the DE-1 satellite's orbit and mission period.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), provided by Dennis Gallagher, MSFC.

Collection Method

Collected by the Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer (RIMS) instrument on the Dynamics Explorer-1 (DE-1) satellite.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03 13 07:35:23.773640; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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