image courtesy of Donald Hunton-Air Force Resarch Laboratory
Welcome to the CINDI (Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigation) data distribution website at the Center for Space Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. We provide the data here from the Ion Velocity Meter (IVM) and the Neutral Wind Meter (NWM) on the C/NOFS satellite. We hope these data will be of use to you and we know you want to get to the database quickly, but please take a few minutes to read over our background material first. Trust us, this will save you a lot of pain and grief later on. For any other questions or requests, please contact Dr. Marc Hairston.
Update October 2008: The CINDI project was launched in April 2008 after spending some 4 years in storage. The requirements for on-orbit spacecraft performance and verification coupled with various interruptions due to initial anomalous behaviors resulted in very little CINDI data being taken prior to August 1, 2008. (Specific requests for data prior to August 1, 2008 should be directed to the CINDI team.) Various spacecraft and instrument operations anomalies continue which result in data outages at various times after August 1, 2008.
To date the solar activity levels are among the lowest observed since 1954. F10.7 cm fluxes below 70 W/m2 result in the very cold atmosphere that largely resides below the satellite perigee of 400 km. The Neutral Wind Meter is thus operating at the lowest edge of its sensitivity limit and no reliable wind measurements are yet available. We expect this situation to improve as solar activity levels increase in 2009.
Low solar activity levels also result in the ionosphere being dominated by H+ at altitude above 500 km. Under these conditions the requirement for the spacecraft to be moving supersonically with respect to the plasma is violated and the drift meter performance measuring the crosstrack ion flows (Vy and Vz) is compromised. Again, we expect this situation to improve as solar activity levels increase in 2009. Good data on ion composition, temperature, density, and ram ion velocity (Vx) from the RPA are available above 500 km.
CINDI DATA CAUTIONS and ADVICE
1.The data
accessible from this web site has undergone a first-order screening to remove
obviously erroneous entries but has not been systematically examined by the
CINDI team to verify the effectiveness of the screening process. A short consult
with the CINDI team prior to extensive analysis of this data would be prudent.
2 . The data may contain small dc biases that cannot be removed prior to the
collection of a long-term (several months) data collection period.
3 . Do not proceed with science findings derived from this data without consulting
a member of the CINDI team to verify that you are using it appropriately.
CINDI DATA USE RULES of the ROAD
1.The data
accessed from this web site may not be redistributed to others.
2. Scientific
findings resulting from the data extracted from this web site must be communicated
to the CINDI Principal Investigator (R.
A. Heelis) prior to submission for publication or presentation. Please be
aware that the CINDI and C/NOFS programs support a number of graduate student
studies using these data and we do not want to undermine their work. Communication
and collaboration is the key.
3. If the
CINDI investigator team does not participate in a science investigation utilizing
the data from this web site any resulting publication should contain an acknowledgement
to the CINDI investigator team that reads
“CINDI
data are provided through the auspices of the CINDI team at the University of
Texas at Dallas supported by NASA grant NAS5-01068”
Current state of the available CINDI data
At present there are no data from the Neutral Wind Meter available here for the reasons described above. We hope to begin distributing NWM data sometime in 2009.
Update May 2009 We have now placed on-line both the plots and the numerical data (ascii files) from CINDI covering the period from 1 August 2008 through the 31 March 2009. Our current plan is to add a new month's data on-line with about a six week delay, though this is subject to change. Data from instrument turn-on (late May 2008) through 31 July 2008 are available by special request with the understanding that some of those data were taken for calibration and may not be usable for research purposes. Please note that these on-line data are STILL PROVISIONAL. Until ionospheric conditions improve enough that we can make reliable cross-track data for an entire orbit, we cannot establish a reliable baseline for the cross-track data. At present we believe the relative variations in the Vy and Vz data over short periods of time (less than one orbit) are reliable, but we cannot be certain of their absolute values. In addition we are still refining our routine that produces the parameters from the RPA (Vx, ion temperature, ion density, and plasma composition). We are confident in the quality of most of these parameters most of the time, but we can guarantee we will be reprocessing these data several more times before we are fully satisfied with all the data. Last, we are still developing a system of quality flags for these data and hope to have that in place by the end of summer. As always, please contact us before using any of these data in a presentation or publication.
We are working very hard to produce quality data that will be of use to the space science community, and we appreciate your patience.
Back to the CINDI homepage
This data distribution website is supported by NASA through funding for the CINDI Small Explorer program, NASA grant NAS5-01068.