Electron temperature probe

Abstract

The electron temperature probe (ETP) was invented in Japan in 1970's. The probe measures the electron temperature accurately and the measurement is not influenced by the electrode contamination. The instrument has low weight, low data transmission bit rate and low power consumption. The probe has been deployed in many sounding rockets, Earth orbiting scientific satellites, and Mars exploration spacecraft in Japan. The probe has also been deployed in sounding rockets in West Germany, India, Canada, USA, and Brazil. The probe has also been deployed in Brazilian satellites, Korean satellites, and recently as a Taiwan satellite payload. The manuscript describes the principle of the ETP instrument, the system configuration, the mechanical interface with respect to the sensor location, the control timing between data processing units; some useful information, the interference with other instruments, and future improvements and tasks. Some useful information for conducting performance check after the instrument fabrication and before the flight deployment is also presented in Appendix A.

Rocket‐borne measurements of electron temperature and density with the Electron Retarding Potential Analyzer instrument

“…Obtaining reliable high-resolution in situ measurements is further complicated by the small gyroradii resulting from the cold temperatures. However, successful measurements have been obtained using Langmuir probes [e.g., Brace et al, 1982;Abe et al, 1990], pulsed probes [Oyama and Cheng, 2013], and electrostatic analyzers, in particular, the hyperbolic analyzer (Harp) [Hays and Sharp, 1973], the Thermal Electron Capped Hemisphere Spectrometer (TECHS) [Pollock et al, 1998;Adrian, 2000], and the Thermal Electron Detector (TED) [MacDonald et al, 2006]. In an attempt to reduce the complexity and cost of making these electron temperature measurements, the rocket-borne -Frost et al, 2007], the ERPA instrument has amassed over a decade of successful flight heritage on multiple sounding rocket missions.…”