2013 Radiation Belts Workshop: Comprehending, Specifying and Forecasting their Dynamics

The Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT): Data exploitation

1 Jul 2013, 09:00

30m

Island of Santorini, Greece (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini)

Oral AP-9, AE-9 International Collaboration AP-9/AE-9 Business Meeting

Speaker

Dr Sylvie Benck (Center for Sapce Radiations / UCL)

Description

Accurate measurements of electron and proton fluxes are required for studies of the physical processes that lead to variations of energetic particle spectra at a given position in space, but also for radiation environment modeling and space weather applications. Such measurements can be provided by the Energetic Particle Telescope (EPT) which presently measures energy spectra of electrons (0.5 - 10 MeV), protons (9 - 300 MeV), α- particles (38 - 1200 MeV) and heavier ions (up to 300 MeV/nucleon) on a circular sun synchronous orbit at 820 km altitude, 98.7 deg. inclination. This presentation is focused on comparison of early EPT proton fluxes with corresponding values measured by energetic proton spectrometers onboard the Van Allen Probes as well as with AE9/AP9 predictions. Furthermore, assessed effects of pitch angle distribution on measured proton fluxes will be briefly described. Finally, the advantages of cross-validation of electron and proton data using steady state fluxes (particle fluxes measured after long period of geomagnetically quiet time) will be presented along with concluding remarks on the full EPT data exploitation plan that includes the development of space weather services based on measured flux lifetimes.