ISEE-3: 1-Minute Magnetic Field and Solar Wind Data from 1978-1979

From August 13, 1978, to June 28, 1979, this dataset provides minute-by-minute records of the magnetic field and solar wind speed from the ISEE-3 satellite. The data was originally created by J. King at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) from magnetometer data provided by E. Smith (JPL) and plasma data from S. Bame and R. Zwickl (LANL). An ASCII version was created at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) in 2002, converting the original IBM binary tape format.

Use Cases

• Modeling solar wind propagation based on the included solar wind speed parameter.
• Analyzing magnetic field fluctuations over time based on the 1-minute temporal resolution.
• Identifying periods of missing or bad data based on the documented special flag values (0.0000E+00, -1.0E9).
• Correlating solar wind conditions with magnetospheric activity based on the concurrent magnetic field measurements.

Strengths

• Covers a specific 10-month time interval from 1978 Day 225 to 1979 Day 179.
• Provides a record for every minute in the time span, even if data is flagged as missing.
• Includes documented special values (0.0000E+00, -1.0E9) to clearly indicate missing or bad data.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description notes lengthy segments where one or many parameters are absent, flagged by special values.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Collection Method

Satellite measurements from the ISEE-3 mission, converted from IBM binary tape to ASCII in 2002.

Time Range

1978-08-13 to 1979-06-28

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 06:45:23.545806; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Space (heliospheric, near Earth)