Update Summary
We're going to try for another launch tomorrow! We'll have a bright and early morning, starting for us at 2:30am local time. We hope to have the balloon launched by 6:00 local time and at float by 8:00 local time. After about 9:00 local time, the ground winds are starting to look like they would be too high for a launch. However, this should allow us to catch some southeasterly winds on the way up giving us *hopefully* a longer launch. Granted, as is stated over and over again in the MET meetings, this is turn around so the winds are getting to be unpredictable.
As the satellite data is coming in, it looks like we got really lucky and had a great event. Thanks everyone for working so hard on this!
Attached at the bottom is a map of the conjunction from August 10th. For some reason the symbols for the lines of constant L aren't working but the start at L = 8 for the orange and then steps of 1 L as you go lower in latitude.
Let's hope that tomorrow is just as good!
News from Kiruna
Ground Weather:
Ground Weather:
http://www.irf.se/weather/
Temp.: 15.1 C
Wind speed: 4.9 m/s with a max of 7.4. m/s within the last five minutes or so.
Temp.: 15.1 C
Wind speed: 4.9 m/s with a max of 7.4. m/s within the last five minutes or so.
Stratospheric weather:
The winds are still looking a bit fast and westwardly, however the assent winds look stronger eastward. This should hopefully give us longer flights as once we hit float altitude we will be further south and east of Norway.
Payloads up: Possible launch of 3B tomorrow
Payloads coming/which came down:3A terminated at about 20:30 UT on August 10th
News from Van Allen Probes:
Summary
Some new times for collection added.
News from MMS:
MMS will be in good position around 09:00 to 11:00 UT. Burst data will not be available until at the end of that window, but we can look for 1030 – 1230 UT, or so and again later around 1400, when VAP will be back in position.
News from Firebird:
News from AeroCube 6
From Drew - AC6 will be running in high rate mode for all of August, meaning they will have 10 Hz sampling rate.
Kiruna Magnetometer: http://www.irf.
It looks like there was a substorm again last night at about 22:00 UT. No EMIC wave activity was observed in the last 24 hours.
Finish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/
GOES Electron Flux:
It looks like the GOES 2MeV electrons are starting to recover, but may still be reaching above the electron event threshold later today. The >800 keV electrons are looking like they may have recovered.
Solar proton density:
Flare activity:
Sunspot AR2396 is rotating off the Earthward side of the solar surface.
Kp:
kp = 2 with a 24 hour max of kp = 3
SW magnetic field:
AE:
Dst:
MMS will be in good position around 09:00 to 11:00 UT. Burst data will not be available until at the end of that window, but we can look for 1030 – 1230 UT, or so and again later around 1400, when VAP will be back in position.
News from THEMIS:
From Xiaojia - I have put together a couple of close conjunctions (in L) between three probes of THEMIS and this BARREL balloon, assuming that you launch at early local morning on August 7th and the geographic location is stabilized at esrange. Currently the THEMIS Ops team are working on implementing special time-based particle burst captures (at 128 Hz) during these intervals.
News from Cluster:
From Fabien - There is sadly no conjunction possible for a possible launch on 10 August. But the first good one is on 12 August at around 11 UT. Which with 6 balloons total is a definite possibility.
News from Firebird:
Summary
From Alex Crew - FIREBIRD is still getting down context (low-rate data) for these periods but we will hopefully (probably tomorrow am around the telecon) commence getting down some hi-res data from this interval [likely ~1920 UT...]
From Alex Crew - FIREBIRD is still getting down context (low-rate data) for these periods but we will hopefully (probably tomorrow am around the telecon) commence getting down some hi-res data from this interval [likely ~1920 UT...]
News from AeroCube 6
From Drew - AC6 will be running in high rate mode for all of August, meaning they will have 10 Hz sampling rate.
We had overhead conjunctions with AC6 (within +/-1 deg latitude and +/-1 hour local time) at 07:07 UT and 21:59 UT yesterday. Once I have the magnetic coordinates of the balloon, I can calculate magnetic conjugacy conjunctions too. Those will be sometime around: 09:45 UT and 19:21 UT, meaning that we had at least one (depending on how you define it) magnetic conjugate conjunction while the balloon was up and operating!
News from EISCAT
EISCAT will be running for at least part of the day tomorrow hoping to catch some more excellent data with BARREL.
Kiruna Magnetometer: http://www.irf.
It looks like there was a substorm again last night at about 22:00 UT. No EMIC wave activity was observed in the last 24 hours.
Finish Magnetometer Array: http://www.sgo.fi/Data/
Kilpisjarvi seems to have seen an EMIC waves around noon and ULF broad band power around 0300 UT and 2200 UT. The ULF broadband wave activity was seen at most of the other stations.
Scandinavian Riometer data http://sgo.fi/Data/
It looks like there was a bit of precipitation early in the morning around 0300UT, perhaps a bit around noon, and then again at around 2300 UT. This is the first time I've tried to read riometer data so please comment if there's something else I should be looking for than dips from the baseline in the raw data.
GOES Electron Flux:
It looks like the GOES 2MeV electrons are starting to recover, but may still be reaching above the electron event threshold later today. The >800 keV electrons are looking like they may have recovered.
GOES Proton Flux:
GOES proton fluxes are remaining nominal.
Solar wind speed:
GOES proton fluxes are remaining nominal.
Solar wind speed:
Vsw = 381.2. km/s
Solar proton density:
density = 4.4 protons/cm^3
Sun spot number:
87 - but there is one very big one (number 2396)
87 - but there is one very big one (number 2396)
Flare activity:
Sunspot AR2396 is rotating off the Earthward side of the solar surface.
Kp:
kp = 2 with a 24 hour max of kp = 3
SW magnetic field:
Bz = 4.7 nT north
Btotal = 8.2 nT
Coronal hole news
There is now an Earthward facing coronal hole.
Coronal hole news
There is now an Earthward facing coronal hole.
AE:
AE appears to be quiet.
Dst:
Dst has remained very very very quiet.
Swedish Phrase of the day:
From the ops room here at ESRANGE
Vad ska du göra (Pronunciation by Nick - "vahd skah doo YOUR-ah") = What are you going to do.
It's part of a check list. Part three will come tomorrow.
Hej då och god kväll från Kiruna (Good bye and good evening from Kiruna),
Alexa and the BARREL team.
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