UKS_Spacecraft

Copyright WDC C1 for STP at RAL.

UKS stands for the UK sub-satellite, one of the three on the taking part in the mission. This spacecraft was funded largely by the UK Science and Engineering Research Council. It carried a range of instruments to measure the particles and fields in the plasma environment of near-Earth space. These are listed below. The spacecraft was spin-stabilised with an axis perpendicular to the ecliptic plane and a period of approximately 5 seconds.

There were five experiments on the UKS craft, exploring particle fluxes, magnetic fields and wave activity. During an orbit of 44 hours data recordings occur for 5 hour periods. The data lasts lasts from September 1984 to January 1985.

Overall details of the spacecraft and of the data handling are available in the following papers:

• A K Ward et al., The AMPTE UKS spacecraft, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol GE-23, No. 3, May 1985, 192-211.

• D R Lepine et al., Data handling for the UKS spacecraft, IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Vol GE-23, No. 3, May 1985, 221-229.

• The AMPTE-UKS mission science plan.

Additional information available:

• Magnetometer
• Ion spectrometer
• Electron spectrometer
• Plasma wave spectrometer
• Particle Correlator
• Operations
• AMPTE_UKS Database

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