Van Allen Probe A: Electric and Magnetic Field Waveform Data

Burst waveform data from the Van Allen Probe A spacecraft, providing targeted measurements of 3-dimensional electric fields, 3-dimensional wave magnetic fields, and spacecraft potential. The dataset includes two burst modes: BURST1 at 512 samples/s nominal and BURST2 at 16384 samples/s nominal, with data in spacecraft-specific 'uvw' coordinates. It is produced by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Use Cases

• Analyzing high-frequency electromagnetic wave events based on the BURST2 mode's 16384 samples/s rate.
• Studying spacecraft charging and plasma environment based on spacecraft potential measurements.
• Investigating wave propagation and polarization based on 3-dimensional electric and magnetic field components.
• Comparing manually triggered (BURST1) and automatically triggered (BURST2) data collection for event detection algorithms.

Strengths

• Provides high-resolution waveform data at a nominal sample rate of 16384 samples/s for BURST2.
• Includes three-dimensional measurements for both electric and magnetic fields.
• Data is collected in spacecraft-specific 'uvw' coordinates, which may be useful for spin-phase analysis.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is stored in BIN format, which may require specialized tools for access and analysis.

Provenance

Source

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Collection Method

Data collected by the Van Allen Probe A spacecraft's Electric Fields and Waves (EFW) instrument.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-13 05:22:27.045081; freshness should be verified.