Electron Microburst Observation with Formation Flying Nonosats

Electron microbursts are the short duration (less than one second) energetic electron precipitation into the Earth's atmosphere, mainly observed in the recovery phase of geomagnetic storms. Microbursts are thought to be caused by chorus waves that is generated by equatorial plasma instability. Measuring spatial scale of electron microbursts imply estimating chorus wave's spatial structures and eventually plasma irregularities in equatorial region. In addition, wave-particle interaction, one of hot topics in magnetospheric physics, could be investigated by observing energy dispersion of microbursts. Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute(KASI) has plan to launch four nanosats to investigate the microburst structures. These four nanosats will be separated on orbit and slowly move away each other to reach the distance of 100 km one year later. The nanosats have simple particle detectors, Langmuir probes and magnetometers. With this mission, we can study multi-scale structures of Ionosphere/ Magnetosphere in low earth orbit. Now this mission is under planning phase and will be launched around 2020.