Pioneer 10 Geiger Tube Telescope 15-Minute Count Rates

15-minute count rates from the Pioneer 10 spacecraft's Geiger Tube Telescope experiment, measuring energetic particle fluxes. The data includes rates for eight sensors and coincidence modes, covering electrons and protons across multiple energy ranges. Data was provided by the University of Iowa to NASA's NSSDC and converted to ASCII by GSFC/SPDF in 2009.

Use Cases

• Analyze directional and omnidirectional fluxes of electrons and protons based on the described sensor modes.
• Study statistical uncertainties in particle count rates based on the described processing parameters.
• Model radiation environment evolution during Pioneer 10's mission based on the 15-minute temporal resolution.
• Compare count rates from different Geiger tube combinations (A,B), (A,B,C), and (D,E,F) as described.

Strengths

• Data includes count rates for eight distinct sensors and coincidence modes.
• Files are available in 6-month ASCII segments, with sizes ranging from ~20MB to less than 1MB.
• Data was converted from VMS-binary tapes to ASCII format in 2009 for accessibility.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Last updated 2026-03-13 05:38:52.682826; freshness should be verified.

Provenance

Source

University of Iowa Geiger Tube Telescope experiment flown on Pioneer 10.

Collection Method

Data provided to NSSDC on VMS-binary-formatted tapes and converted to ASCII by GSFC/SPDF.