VI. COORDINATION WITH EXPERIMENTS In FY79 and FY80 general coordination efforts were maintained with a number of active experiments which may be of significance to SPS magnetospheric effects assessment. While none of the experiments is of sufficient massiveness to allow definitive statements to be made about SPS impacts, the results of coordination with the BUARO barium release experiment in the F- region and with the spacecraft charging observations of SCATHA are of importance in identifying potentially important impacts. In FY79 coordination with observations of the CAMEO satellite release of barium at ~ 1000 km altitude was made. Barium release from a fast-moving low-altitude satellite at auroral latitudes is kinematically similar to the release of heavy ion plasma by an ion engine beam. It is expected that the relative streaming between the Ba+ plasma and the ambient magnetospheric plasma would drive a great deal of plasma burbulence. This is seen in a number of ground-based photographs provided by Dr. M. Pongratz of LASL. Unfortunately, the CAMEO experiment does not involve in situ diagnostics such as electric field measurements; therefore, it is not possible to elucidate further the nature of the observed plasma turbulence. In FY80 coordination was made with experimenters of the BUARO barium release, also in the upper F-region, (Dr. H. C. Koons of Aerospace and Dr. M. Pongratz of LASL). In situ diagnostics of this shaped-charge release were available. Consequently, a number of plasma instabilities of Table III were identified by the experimenters (Koons and Pongratz, 1980). In addition, we think that a sequential reversal of the d.c. electric field at the early phase of the release may be interpreted in terms of the signature of Alfven wave propagation and reflection, although more positive identification requires 72
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