1. The SuperDARN Radar network and the RBSP mission – ULF waves
Start with Tim Yeoman
Add Mike
Add Simon
Robert, Jim, Mark
RBSP meeting, May 2011

2. Summary info
Launch date: 4:00 AM on August 23 Fully ready for joint science, two months later.
athena.jhuapl.edu - RBSP web site including ephemerides
Check site for RBSP Orbit Position Calculator,
begins Oct 6, 08:24 UT
ASCII format

3. RBSP Overview (1/2)
The mission is to gain scientific understanding of how populations of relativistic electrons and ions in space form or change in response to changes in solar activity and the solar wind.[1]
The mission's general scientific objectives are to:[
Discover which processes - singly or in combination - accelerate and transport the particles in the radiation belt, and under what conditions.
Understand and quantify the loss of electrons from the radiation belts.
Determine the balance between the processes that cause electron acceleration and those that cause losses.
Understand how the radiation belts change in the context of geomagnetic storms.

4. RBSP Overview – Wikipedia (2/2)
Spacecraft
RBSP consists of two spin-stabilized spacecraft to be launched with a single Atlas V rocket.
Instruments
Each probe will carry the following:
Energetic Particle, Composition, and Thermal Plasma (ECT) Instrument Suite [1]; The Principal Investigator is Harlan Spence [2] from University of New Hampshire. Key partners in this investigation are LANL, Southwest Research Institute, Aerospace Corporation and LASP
Electric and Magnetic Field Instrument Suite and Integrated Science (EMFISIS); The Principal Investigator is Craig Kletzing from the University of Iowa.
Electric Field and Waves Instrument (EFW); The Principal Investigator is John Wygant from the University of Minnesota. Key partners in this investigation include the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Radiation Belt Storm Probes Ion Composition Experiment (RBSPICE); The Principal Investigator is Lou Lanzerotti [3] from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Key partners include the Applied Physics Laboratory and Fundamental Technologies, LLC [4].
Relativistic Particle Spectrometer (RPS) from the National Reconnaissance Office
The mission is to gain scientific understanding of how populations of relativistic electrons and ions in space form or change in response to changes in solar activity and the solar wind.[1]

5. SuperDARN-RBSP Coordination – July 20 status
Scientific aims – maximize the value of observations obtained during storm-times with RBSP , especially during conjunctions
Proposed RBSP mode:
3 camping beams to enable determinations of ULF azimuthal wave numbers (Tim’s suggestion)
simultaneous coverage of large-scale convection
triggered during storm-time conditions
Other thoughts:
15 km resolution for radars that overlap the RBSP track ? ?

6. A demonstration of the RBSP footpoint tracks for a full day – red for RBSP-A and purple for RBSP-B. There are three perigee passes per day which max at an invariant latitude of ~70 deg. The dot separation is 5 min.
Rob: A plot of 24 hours of RBSP footprints using dummy data that I downloaded from the APL website in November Their website is still down, so I can't check whether this is still what they are expecting the spacecraft to do, but I would have thought it gives a good indication.

7. Sample RBSP tracks indicating that the mid-latitude radars are better positioned for conjunctions with RBSP

8. SuperDARN Schedule June 2012 01:00 02:06 Common Time (1-min)
02: :12 Common Time (THEMIS)
03: :00 Special Time [see note A]
04: :18 Common Time (THEMIS)
04: :18 Discretionary Time
05: :00 Common Time (THEMIS) [see note 1]
07: :00 Discretionary Time
...
# Total Common Time (1-min): 11d 0h
# Total Discretionary Time: 9d 0h
# Total Special Time: 3d 6h
# Total Common Time (THEMIS): 6d 18h

9. SuperDARN Schedule Special Time notes:
This was a spacecraft working group request to support CLUSTER observations
of the auroral acceleration region and the magnetopause/magnetotail. In the
following notes the radars shown should run a version of normal scan that
allows the setting of the range gate separation to 15km (keeping the lag to
first range gate at 180 km). The number of range gates should be at least 75
but can be more at the discretion of the operator. The scan time should be
1-min. All other radars should run normal scan.
Common Time (THEMIS) notes:
of the auroral acceleration region and the magnetopause/magnetotail. The
following notes detail which radars need to run themisscan with the
associated non-default camping beams. All other radars should run themisscan
with the normal default beams as usual.

10. SuperDARN operating modes – initial RBSP test mode
Apparently a test run of the 3-beam camping mode, note CPID = but generated using Stereo A (full-scan) and B (3 – beam) channels

11. 2 h data
Beam 8A
Beam 8B
Note higher resolution on the channel B camping beam

12. 6 h data from the
3 Channel B beams
Beam 8
Beam 9
Beam 12
Heightened resolution for the Channel B camping beams

13. SuperDARN RBSP mode - comments
Suggestion is to run 3 camping beams with full scans:
Which three beams? Suggestion is to have a selection like beams 8, 9, and 12 which generates separations of 1, 3, and 4 beam steps. Prefer more meridional or off-meridional?
Beam scanning temporal resolution – if this camping is implemented in the standard way, then the scan repeat time increases to 4 min on non–stereo radars. It is possible to economize – see Simon’s analysis of beam scanning options
Suggestion is to trigger the RBSP mode:
Need to refine radar control programs for the RBSP mode
Need to work out an triggering protocol, possible need to respect DT/ST allocations
Need to generate visuals to help RBSP groups with planning:
Overplot satellite tracks on a map of radar fields of view using dummy data (
Overplot satellite tracks on a storm-time global backscatter or velocity map

14. SuperDARN RBSP mode – PI decisions?
Could benefit from a greater appreciation of the top-level (1 or 2) scientific goals of the mission. What would the RBSP science leaders be most excited about?
Perhaps could do as well running the standard mode but should require that all radars run the same standard mode (e.g., 1 min scanning)

15. SuperDARN RBSP mode – Simon’s comment on camping beams
I spent some time making themisscan compatible with the >16 beam radars, allowing for non-standard camping beams, and keeping to the 3s integration that seemed to be fundamental to the original concept of the mode. What are the equivalent criteria for the RBSP mode? 3s integration? What is the beam ordering: b0 c1 b1 c2 b2 c3 b3 c1 b4 c2 b5 c3 etc. where c1, c2, and c3 are camping beams selected by the user. Also, in my version of themiscan you did not sample the camping beam in the regular scan, i.e., if the camping beam was 3 then the sequence would be: etc as opposed to: etc So these are the things I am thinking about for the RBSP mode. As an aside, Jef would point out that we could run RBSP mode on a separate channel and our favorite mode on the other, but only if we run in RF mode.