Journal
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-SPACE PHYSICS
Volume 120, Issue 7, Pages 5703-5727Publisher
AMER GEOPHYSICAL UNION
DOI: 10.1002/2015JA021171
Keywords
radiation belt; inner radiation belt; background contamination; spacecraft engineering; outer radiation belt; particle measurements
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Funding
- RBSP-ECT - JHU/APL contract under NASA [967399, NAS5-01072]
- NASA [NNX10AK93G]
- U.S. Department of Energy
- NASA Van Allen Probes mission
- NASA [NNX10AK93G, 130412] Funding Source: Federal RePORTER
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We describe an automated computer algorithm designed to remove background contamination from the Van Allen Probes Magnetic Electron Ion Spectrometer (MagEIS) electron flux measurements. We provide a detailed description of the algorithm with illustrative examples from on-orbit data. We find two primary sources of background contamination in the MagEIS electron data: inner zone protons and bremsstrahlung X-rays generated by energetic electrons interacting with the spacecraft material. Bremsstrahlung X-rays primarily produce contamination in the lower energy MagEIS electron channels (approximate to 30-500keV) and in regions of geospace where multi-MeV electrons are present. Inner zone protons produce contamination in all MagEIS energy channels at roughly L < 2.5. The background-corrected MagEIS electron data produce a more accurate measurement of the electron radiation belts, as most earlier measurements suffer from unquantifiable and uncorrectable contamination in this harsh region of the near-Earth space environment. These background-corrected data will also be useful for spacecraft engineering purposes, providing ground truth for the near-Earth electron environment and informing the next generation of spacecraft design models (e.g., AE9).
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