The Relativistic Electron-Proton Telescope (REPT) Instrument on Board the Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) Spacecraft: Characterization of Earth’s Radiation Belt High-Energy Particle Populations

Baker, D. N.; Kanekal, S.; Hoxie, V. C.; Batiste, Susan N.; Bolton, M.; Li, X.; Elkington, S. R.; Monk, S.; Reukauf, Randy A.; Steg, Stephen R.; Westfall, J.; Belting, Chris; Bolton, B.; Braun, D.; Cervelli, B.; Hubbell, K.; Kien, M.; Knappmiller, S.; Wade, Salimata; Lamprecht, Bret; Stevens, K W H; Wallace, Janet; Yehle, A.; Spence, H. E.; Friedel, R. H. W.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4899-7433-4_11

Cited by 173 publications

(202 citation statements)

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“…The counter detected a belt of electrons with energy greater than 15 MeV that existed for several days before disappearing. It should be noted that the same phenomena were observed recently on board NASA's Van Allen Probes (previously known as the Radiation Belt Storm Probes) [Baker et al, 2013a], but the Cherenkov on board Cosmos 900 [Gorchakov et al, 1981] was more than 30,000 times more sensitive than the Relativistic Electron-Proton Telescope on board the Van Allen Probes.…”

Section: Page 500mentioning

confidence: 72%

“Nonempty” Gap Between Radiation Belts: The First Observations

Panasyuk

2013

EoS Transactions

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The first space experiments carried out in 1958 by the scientific groups of James Van Allen (United States) on board the first Explorer satellites and Sergey Vernov (Soviet Union) on board the satellite Sputnik 3 led to the discovery of the Earth's radiation belts—the particles (mainly protons and electrons) captured by the magnetic field of the Earth. Two scientific groups independently came to the conclusion that the electrons in the geomagnetic trapping region fill two areas, inner and outer radiation belts, unlike the protons, which fill the whole trapping region [see, e.g., Lemaire, 2000].

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Section: Page 500mentioning

confidence: 72%

“Nonempty” Gap Between Radiation Belts: The First Observations

Panasyuk

2013

EoS Transactions

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Section: Scientific Goalsmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…It is strictly a proton spectrometer focused on the primary constituent of the inner belt. RPS complements the other energetic proton measurements on RBSP (Baker et al 2012;Blake et al 2012) by extending the proton capability of the mission into the GeV range beyond previous investigations from the near-geosynchronous transfer orbit of CRRES (Johnson and Kierein 1992).The measurement difficulties in a high-background environment of penetrating particles, along with the mission challenges of operating in the inner belt, have allowed us to obtain only glimpses of the entire inner belt proton population, either at the bottom of the field lines in low-Earth orbit (e.g. Baker et al 1993) or only up to ∼100 MeV at higher altitudes (Albert and Ginet 1998).…”

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confidence: 82%

The Relativistic Proton Spectrometer (RPS) for the Radiation Belt Storm Probes Mission

et al. 2012

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The Relativistic Proton Spectrometer (RPS) on the Radiation Belt Storm Probes spacecraft is a particle spectrometer designed to measure the flux, angular distribution, and energy spectrum of protons from ∼60 MeV to ∼2000 MeV. RPS will investigate decadesold questions about the inner Van Allen belt proton environment: a nearby region of space that is relatively unexplored because of the hazards of spacecraft operation there and the difficulties in obtaining accurate proton measurements in an intense penetrating background. RPS is designed to provide the accuracy needed to answer questions about the sources and losses of the inner belt protons and to obtain the measurements required for the nextgeneration models of trapped protons in the magnetosphere. In addition to detailed information for individual protons, RPS features count rates at a 1-second timescale, internal radiation dosimetry, and information about electrostatic discharge events on the RBSP spacecraft that together will provide new information about space environmental hazards in the Earth's magnetosphere. Keywords Scientific GoalsWithin two Earth radii of the Earth's surface there is an unexplored region of trapped particles that are a challenge to accurately measure, a challenge to engineer for spacecraft design, and a challenge to understand given particle lifetimes that can exceed decades or even centuries. The inner Van Allen belt is a nearby reservoir of charged particles from a multitude of sources. We know the existence of trapped protons with energies beyond 1 GeV, secondary particles such as positrons, electrons, and light ions 4 He, 3 He, and 2 H, electrons that diffuse inward from the outer magnetosphere, and heavy ions that originate as interstellar neutral particles. These particles execute their gyration, bounce, and drift motions in a region with a relatively strong and stable magnetic field that shelters them from transients in the geomagnetic field, yielding the longest trapping lifetimes for particles in the Earth's magnetosphere. The tenuous upper atmosphere is both a source and sink of these populations, whose influence varies over the solar cycle and episodically during times of rapid atmospheric joule heating.The Relativistic Proton Spectrometer (RPS) 223Sorting out the various sources and losses in the Inner belt is challenging but there are particle characteristics that aid the process such as: extremely high proton energies that distinguish these particles as having a galactic cosmic ray origin; heavy ion composition that identifies these as being anomalous cosmic rays whose access to the inner belt is only afforded by their being mostly singly-ionized; and antimatter composition that identifies another branch the products of nuclear collisions between galactic cosmic rays and atmospheric atoms. For electrons the picture is less clear since there is little information about the electron energy spectrum and no identifiable characteristics of an electron that originates from a nuclear interaction versus one that diffu...

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“…The REPT research team, however, argued that it would be relatively safe to turn on the REPT instruments early [Baker et al, 2012a]-just 3 days after launch-so that the instruments would overlap with the SAMPEX mission that was soon going to deorbit and reenter Earth's atmosphere [Baker et al, 2012b].…”

Section: The Van Allen Probesmentioning

confidence: 99%