The GOES-16 Energetic Heavy Ion Sensor (EHIS) Ion Composition and Flux Measurements

The Energetic Heavy Ion Sensor (EHIS) was built by the University of New Hampshire, subcontracted to Assurance Technology Corporation, as part of the Space Environmental In-Situ Suite (SEISS) on the new GOES-16 satellite (formerly GOES-R) in Geostationary orbit. EHIS measures energetic ions over the range 10-200 MeV for protons, and energy ranges for heavy ions corresponding to the same stopping range (e.g., 19-207 MeV/u for carbon and 38-488 MeV/u for iron). EHIS uses the Angle Detecting Inclined Sensors (ADIS) technique to provide single-element charge resolution. Though on an operational mission for Space Weather monitoring, EHIS can thus provide a new source of high quality Solar Particle Event (SPE) data for science studies. With a high rate of on-board processing ( 2000 events/s), EHIS will provide exceptional statistics for ion composition measurements in large SPEs. For the GOES Level 1-B and Level 2 data products, heavy ions are distinguished in EHIS using pulse-height analysis with on-board processing producing charge histograms for five energy bands. Fits to these data are normalized to priority rate data on the ground. The instrumental cadence for histograms is 1 minute and the primary Level 1-B heavy ion data products are 1-minute and 5-minute averages. We discuss the preliminary EHIS heavy ion data results which show elemental peaks from H to Fe, with peaks for the isotopes D and 3He. (GOES-16 was launched in 19 November, 2016 and data has, though July 2017, been dominated by Galactic Cosmic Rays.) The EHIS instrument development project was funded by NASA under contract NNG06HX01C.