THEMIS was launched on February 17, 2007 to determine the trigger and large-scale evolution of substorms. During the first seven months of the mission the five satellites coasted near their injection ...orbit to avoid differential precession in anticipation of orbit placement, which started in September 2007 and led to a commencement of the baseline mission in December 2007. During the coast phase the probes were put into a string-of-pearls configuration at 100 s of km to 2 RE along-track separations, which provided a unique view of the magnetosphere and enabled an unprecedented dataset in anticipation of the first tail season. In this paper we describe the first THEMIS substorm observations, captured during instrument commissioning on March 23, 2007. THEMIS measured the rapid expansion of the plasma sheet at a speed that is commensurate with the simultaneous expansion of the auroras on the ground. These are the first unequivocal observations of the rapid westward expansion process in space and on the ground. Aided by the remote sensing technique at energetic particle boundaries and combined with ancillary measurements and MHD simulations, they allow determination and mapping of space currents. These measurements show the power of the THEMIS instrumentation in the tail and the radiation belts. We also present THEMIS Flux Transfer Events (FTE) observations at the magnetopause, which demonstrate the importance of multi-point observations there and the quality of the THEMIS instrumentation in that region of space.
The three microsatellites that comprise the Space Technology 5 (ST5) mission were launched into a dawn-dusk, 300 x 4500 km sun-synchronous orbit in a 'pearls-on-a-string' configuration, with spacings ...ranging from > 5000 km down to under 50 km. Fluxgate magnetometers on board each spacecraft collected vector magnetic field data from March 26 through June 30, 2006. In this study we present the first results of a survey of ULF waves in the Pc 1-2 frequency range, with a total of 105 events, recorded by these spacecraft. Waves in the middle magnetosphere (L from 4 to 7) were observed to have a nearly uniform diurnal occurrence rate. At higher latitudes (L > 7) occurrence was maximum in the dawn-noon sector, consistent with stimulation by magnetospheric compressions. Only five wave events were observed at L < 4. The temporal occurrence distribution roughly followed the occurrence of Pc 1-2 activity recorded at Halley, Antarctica (L = 4.5), in that the number and intensity of events was increased during magnetospheric compressions, during the recovery phase of magnetic storms, and during one extended interval of disturbed but only modestly negative Dst. Somewhat surprisingly, only eight events were observed by all three spacecraft as they passed over similar L shells, and only 14 events, including two each on three days, were observed by two spacecraft. Nearly all of these events occurred during storm recovery. We interpret the lack of more multi-spacecraft observations as indicating the highly localized nature of regions in the magnetosphere that become unstable to electromagnetic ion cyclotron instabilities.
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