The Wind spacecraft mission, part of the International Solar Terrestrial Physics program, measures solar wind and Earth's foreshock region. The WAVES investigation provides coverage of radio and plasma wave phenomena from fractions of a Hertz to 14 MHz for electric fields and up to 3 kHz for magnetic fields. Data is archived by the Polar-Wind-Geotail Data Archive and NASA's CDAWeb.
Use Cases
- Analyze solar wind interactions with Earth's magnetosphere based on in-situ plasma wave measurements.
- Study plasma instabilities like whistler waves and electron plasma oscillations based on described wave modes.
- Model the response of Geospace to varying solar wind conditions based on the described measurement purpose.
- Investigate local processes and couplings at different boundaries of Geospace based on the described scientific aims.
Strengths
- Covers a wide frequency range from fractions of a Hertz to 14 MHz for electric fields.
- Measures both electric and magnetic field components of plasma waves.
- Part of a coordinated multi-satellite project (ISTP) including Geotail, Polar, SOHO, and Cluster.
Limitations
- Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
- Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
- Last update date is unknown; freshness unverified.
Provenance
- Source
- Polar-Wind-Geotail (PWG) Data Archive and NASA CDAWeb
- Collection Method
- Measurements from the WAVES instrument on the WIND spacecraft.
- Geography
- Geospace (Earth's magnetosphere and surrounding solar wind)