New High Energy Electron Component of Earth Radiation Belt
Abstract
The Earth Radiation Belt (ERB) was discovered in the course of the first flights of Russian and American satellites with conventional instruments (gas discharge and scintillation counters), which made it possible to investigate many characteristics of trapped particles and simulate adequate radiation belt models. However, the experimental and theoretical evidence accumulated over recent time, needs more elaborate measurements for its interpretation. These measurements became feasible after the development of devices based on more perfect detectors (solid and gas-filled Cherenkov detectors, magnetic spectrometer, scintillation time-of-flight systems). The evidence requiring new direct measurements in the ERB was obtained in the late 1960s in the course of balloon flights carried out by Cosmophysics Laboratory of the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute. In these flights a correlation between the high energy electron flux in the upper atmosphere and perturbations ofthe Earth's magnetosphere was established. This phenomenon could be explained assuming there exist high energy electron fluxes in the ERB. High energy electron fluxes in the ERB were recorded for the first time in the direct experiments carried out on board orbital station 'Salyut-6' (orbit altitude - 350 km, inclination 51.6 deg). A scintillation-Cherenkov telescope 'Elena' controlled by cosmonauts was preset to different programmed positions. The measurements were made in the periphery of the ERB, namely, in the part which goes as low as several hundred km in the Brazil Anomaly Region (BRA). The flux of electrons with energies above 30 MeV was up to 104 (m2s sr)-1.
- Publication:
-
High Energy Radiation Background in Space
- Pub Date:
- 1999
- Bibcode:
- 1999herb.conf..114D
- Keywords:
-
- Radiation Belts;
- Balloon Flight;
- Earth Magnetosphere;
- Flux (Rate);
- Flux Density;
- Scintillation Counters;
- Terrestrial Radiation;
- Upper Atmosphere;
- Anomalies;
- Cosmonauts;
- Electrons;
- High Energy Electrons;
- Magnetic Spectroscopy;
- Salyut Space Station;
- Space Stations;
- Trapped Particles;
- Space Radiation