The Science Instruments On The WIND Spacecraft
The aim of ISTP is to understand the behavior of the solar-terrestrial plasma environment in order to predict how the Earth's atmosphere will respond to changes in solar wind conditions. WIND's objective is to measure the properties of the solar wind before it reaches the Earth. The WIND spacecraft has an array of instruments including: Konus, the Wind Magnetic Field Investigation (MFI), the Solar Wind and Suprathermal Ion Composition Experiment (SMS), The Energetic Particles: Acceleration, Composition, and Transport (EPACT) investigation, the Solar Wind Experiment (SWE), a Three-Dimensional Plasma and Energetic Particle Investigation (3DP), the Transient Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (TGRS), and the Radio and Plasma Wave Investigation (WAVES) . The Konus and TGRS instruments are primarily for gamma-ray and high energy photon observations of solar flares or gamma-ray bursts. The SMS experiment measures the mass and mass-to-charge ratios of heavy ions. The SWE and 3DP experiments are meant to measure/analyze the lower energy (below 10 MeV) solar wind protons and electrons. The WAVES and MFI experiments were designed to measure the electric and magnetic fields observed in the solar wind. All together, the WIND spacecraft's suite of instruments allows for a complete description of plasma phenomena in the solar wind plane of the ecliptic.
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