0883-6272/86 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ® 1986 SUNSAT Energy Council NONLINEAR INTERACTION OF STRONG MICROWAVE BEAM WITH THE IONOSPHERE MINIX ROCKET EXPERIMENT N.KAYA Faculty of Engineering Kobe University Rokko, Kobe 657, Japan H. MATSUMOTO RASC Kyoto University Uji, Kyoto 611, Japan S. MIYATAKE Electro-communication University Chofu, Tokyo 182, Japan I. KIMURA Faculty of Engineering Kyoto University Kyoto 606, Japan M. NAGATOMO and T. OBAYASHI Inst. Space and Astronaut. Sci. Komaba, Tokyo 153, Japan Abstract — A rocket-borne experiment called MINIX was carried out to investigate the nonlinear interaction of a strong microwave energy beam with the ionosphere. The MINIX stands for A/icrowave-Zonosphere Nonlinear/nteraction eA'periment and was carried out on August 29, 1983. The objectives of the MINIX is to study possible impacts of the SPS microwave energy beam on the ionosphere such as the Ohmic heating and plasma wave excitation. The experiment showed that the microwave with f = 2.45 GHz nonlinearly excites various electrostatic plasma waves, though no Ohmic heating effects were detected. INTRODUCTION One of the important issues of the Solar Power Satellite (SPS) is to make an assessment of possible impacts of the SPS on the Earth's environment prior to the design of the SPS. The microwave-ionosphere interaction is one of such topics which needs to be studied prior to the realization of the SPS. In order to meet such a need, a rocket-borne experiment called MINIX was carried out by a Japanese S-520-6 sounding rocket on August 29, 1983. The MINIX stands for A/icrowave-/onosphere Nonlinear /nteraction eA'periment. One of the objectives of the MINIX is to measure plasma wave spectra during the microwave transmission and collect quantitative
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