STEREO-A PLASTIC: 1-Minute Solar Wind Proton Plasma Parameters

STEREO-A Plasma and Suprathermal Ion Composition (PLASTIC) data provides 1-minute values of solar wind proton flow speed, density, temperature, and thermal speed. The dataset includes flow velocity vector components, direction angles in HERTN and RTN coordinates, chi-squared and statistical uncertainties, various flags, and STEREO position information. This data product is provided by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and was last updated on March 13, 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling solar wind propagation based on proton flow speed and velocity vector components.
• Analyzing solar wind density and temperature fluctuations for space weather forecasting.
• Correlating spacecraft position data with plasma parameter measurements for heliospheric studies.
• Assessing data quality and uncertainty for scientific analysis using included chi-squared values and statistical uncertainty flags.

Strengths

• Data includes multiple physical parameters per record: speed, density, temperature, thermal speed, and velocity vectors.
• Provides statistical quality indicators such as chi-squared values and uncertainty flags.
• Includes spacecraft positional data in multiple coordinate systems (HEE, HEEQ, HCI).

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Measurements from the STEREO-A spacecraft's PLASTIC instrument.

Time Range

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Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 04:45:31.664142; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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