Microburst Precipitation Measured with the FIREBIRD-II CubeSats

Abstract:

Focused Investigations of Relativistic Electron Burst Intensity, Range, and Dynamics II (FIREBIRD-II) is an NSF CubeSat mission specifically designed to address key science questions about microbursts. Launched on January 31, 2015 it consists of a pair of identical 1.5U CubeSats, which measure electron microburst precipitation in low-Earth Orbit. Microbursts, which are short (~100ms) intense bursts of electron precipitation to the Earth’s atmosphere, are one particular form of electron loss from the Earth’s radiation belts and have often been associated with intense chorus wave activity. Each spacecraft carries a pair of solid state detectors to measure the precipitating electrons in 6 energy channels from 200 keV to 1 MeV in energy at 18.75 ms time resolution. We present observations of both individual microburst events (timing, size scales, spectra) as well as larger trends in microburst precipitation observed over the course of the entire mission to date.