Pioneer 11 GTT: 15-Minute Energetic Particle Count Rates

NASA's Pioneer 11 Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT) experiment recorded 15-minute count rates for energetic particles. The dataset contains rates for 8 sensors and 3 coincidence modes, measuring electron and proton fluxes across multiple energy ranges. Data were converted from VMS-binary tapes to ASCII format by GSFC/SPDF in 2009 and are available in 6-month files.

Use Cases

• Modeling the temporal evolution of energetic particle fluxes based on 15-minute resolution time-series data.
• Analyzing correlations between different particle energy channels (e.g., 0.04-21 MeV electrons vs. >80 MeV protons).
• Validating space weather models using historical in-situ measurements from the Pioneer 11 mission.
• Studying sensor coincidence events based on rates from the (A,B), (A,B,C), and (D,E,F) tube combinations.

Strengths

• Provides data for 8 distinct sensors and 3 multi-sensor coincidence modes, offering multiple measurement perspectives.
• Includes associated parameters for each count rate, such as contributing counts and statistical uncertainty.
• Data files are organized in 6-month segments, with sizes ranging from ~20MB to less than 1MB, facilitating manageable downloads.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred from the referenced document after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale statistical analysis.
• Data were converted from a legacy VMS-binary format; potential data integrity issues from the conversion cannot be ruled out.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), University of Iowa.

Collection Method

Data obtained from the Geiger Tube Telescope (GTT) experiment flown on the Pioneer 11 spacecraft.

Time Range

Covers the operational lifetime of the Pioneer 11 GTT experiment.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:38:10.250908; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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