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The Demonstration and Science Experiments Mission: Modeling of Wave Propagation and Triggered Emissions
  • Michael J Starks,
  • Jay M Albert,
  • Dave S Lauben
Michael J Starks
Air Force Research Laboratory

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Jay M Albert
Air Force Research Laboratory
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Dave S Lauben
Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University
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Abstract

The Demonstration and Science Experiments (DSX) mission operated in medium Earth orbit from 25 June 2019 until 31 May 2021. During this time it conducted experiments that actively injected very low frequency waves into the inner magnetosphere to study wave generation, wave propagation, and wave-particle interactions. Experiment planning used cold plasma ray tracing to predict conjunctions for space-to-space transmissions, and the same technique supports post-mission analysis of both monostatic and bistatic signal receptions. Modifications for warm plasma may also be required for extremely oblique waves. In addition, evaluations of amplitude thresholds for triggered emissions provide bounds on DSX signal amplitudes useful for constraining the antenna performance. This report describes both of these analytical tools in the context of mission planning and data analysis. Ongoing analysis using these techniques will be reported in future publications.