MMS HPCA: Magnetospheric Plasma Ion Composition and Energy Measurements

NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale mission provides ion composition data from its Hot Plasma Composition Analyzer. The instrument measures counts for five ion species across 63 energy levels and 16 azimuthal directions every 10 seconds. Data covers protons, alpha particles, helium ions, singly charged oxygen, and background counts in the energy range from 1 eV to 40 keV.

Use Cases

• Modeling magnetospheric plasma dynamics based on ion species composition data.
• Analyzing ion energy distributions across 63 energy levels.
• Studying spatial variations in plasma using 16 azimuthal measurement directions.
• Investigating the relative abundance of specific ions like protons, helium, and oxygen.

Strengths

• Measures five distinct ion species, enabling detailed composition analysis.
• Provides data across 63 energy levels, offering a detailed energy spectrum.
• Captures spatial information through 16 azimuthal measurement directions per half spacecraft spin.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by the Hot Plasma Composition Analyzer instrument on the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 09:11:58.301485; freshness should be verified.