TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION OF THE IONOSPHERIC PLASMA AT FLAYER

Langmuir probe was housed in the sounding rocket to test the probe's performance and to find the environmental parameters at the F layer of the ionosphere. The gold plated cylindrical probe had a length of 14㎝ and a diameter of 0.096 ㎝. The applied voltage to the probe consisted of 0.9 sec fixed positive bias followed by 0.1 sec of down/up sweep. This ensured that the probe swept through the probe's current-voltage characteristic at least once during 1 second quiescent periods enabling the electron temperature to be measured during the undisturbed times of the flight. The experimental results showed good agreement of the temperature distribution with IRI model at the lower F layer. In the upper layer, the experimental temperatures were 100-200K lower than the IRI model's because of the different geomagnetic conditions: averaged conditions were used in IRI model and specific conditions were reflected in the experiment.