Ionosphere images from Alouette satellites
Designed and assembled in Canada, Alouette-1 was the first satellite built by a nation other than the United States or the Soviet Union. It was constructed at a time when most satellites had a useful lifespan of a few months. Although Alouette-1 was as complex as any previously launched satellite, rapidly advancing technology and the extreme care exercised in all phases of Alouette-1’s development had led the Canadian builders to expect that their satellite would operate for at least 1 year. However, Alouette-1 operated for 10 years. In its first 3 months of operation, Alouette-1 produced some of the most exciting data obtained during the entire 50-year history of ionospheric research, and it continued to provide valuable information until its 10th birthday. Alouette-1 is best known for its swept-frequency topside sounder experiment. The other experiments (VLF, cosmic noise, and energetic particle measurements) were, however, equally successful, and they also remained operational for 10 years. The Alouette-1 mission resulted in over 300 publications in refereed scientific journals. About 80 percent of Alouette-1 publications were based on the ionograms obtained from the topside sounder experiment. In its first 3 years of operation, Alouette-1 obtained over a million ionograms, each equivalent to a snapshot of the ionosphere from the Alouette-1 altitude of 1000 km down to an altitude of about 300 km. These ionograms have provided data at all geomagnetic latitudes and at geographic latitudes ranging from 80° N to 80° S. After 10 years, Alouette-1 had produced 2 million ionograms.
- Publisher - Current Organization Name: Canadian Space Agency
- Licence: Open Government Licence - Canada
Data and Resources
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Ionosphere images from Alouette satellites - DatasetPNGNo linguistic content; Not applicable dataset PNG
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Data specifications Alouette-IDOCXEnglish guide DOCX
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Data specifications Alouette-IDOCXFrench guide DOCX
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Alouette 1 data restorationDOCXEnglish guide DOCX
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Alouette 1 data restorationDOCXFrench guide DOCX
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Reference SheetXLSXNo linguistic content; Not applicable dataset XLSX
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Reference SheetCSVNo linguistic content; Not applicable dataset CSV
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MicrofichesJPGNo linguistic content; Not applicable dataset JPG