FOIA: Electron and Proton Fluxes in the Tail of the Magnetosphere

VELA_SATELLITES_DOC_2.pdf
Electron and Proton Fluxes in the Tail of the Magnetosphere
The report 'Electron and proton Fluxes in the Tail of the Magnetosphere' discusses observation and energy spectra of electrons and protons in inslands at the back of the magnetosphere and comparision to those in the aurora.
Document date: 1965-11-01
Department: Lab for Space Sciences, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD.
Author: Andrei Konradi
Document type: report
pages: 28

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Archivist's Notes: A good quality document. No hand written marks on report. Very few blackouts.

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This document contains a report by Andrei Konradi on research of electron interaction with the Earth’s magnetosphere. He describes areas of electron islands where electrons interact and energy levels spike and then slowly dissipate. He also mentioned how the electron islands were related to the auroras otherwise known as Northern Lights.

The measurements that this information is based on was recorded by the Vela satellites, so the report was probably documented because it was supporting information after the Vela Incident, in which it detected a suspected atmospheric nuclear detonation in the Indian Ocean, south of Africa, on September 22, 1979.

The report is highly technical and detailed, but there is not much more information about the satellite other than that it contributed to this scientific research. There is some information about the detectors and their construction in the Introduction.

Related FOIA Documents:
FOIA: Direct Measurements of Interplanetary Magnetic Field and Plasma
FOIA: Defense Technical Intelligence Report for the 22 Sep 1979 Vela Satellite event
FOIA: A report by a panel of non-government scientists on the Sep 22, 1979 Vela satellite event

Related Links:
Wikipedia article on the Vela Incident

Hal 9000 has already summarized the report perfectly.

After reading the document, there appears to be little reason for this document to be amongst Vela incident 747 material
…the research was done in 1965 and places more emphasis on Explorer XIV than Vela (only casually mentioned a couple of times).

While I found the discussions about the islands of electron fluxes being apparent in both the magnetosphere tail and the aurora and the various hypotheses interesting…
I can only imagine the document was included for the supporting data that may have provided comparative information for the research into the Vela incident in the 70s and early 80s.

[edit on 27-11-2007 by frozen_snowman]