http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/137206865

Study of Upper Atmosphere Wind Motions

This report summarizes the efforts at UT Dallas to evaluate the crosswind measuring capability of the AFGL accelerometers (MESA's) mounted on the Atmosphere Explorer satellites. The software available for this purpose from AFGL had some limitations that prevented its use for our purposes, and much of our contract time was devoted to producing a suitable software package. Using this, we find that the wind data from all three spacecraft are probably useful, though the AE-D data are somewhat noisier than that from AE-C and AE-E. Both AE-D and AE-E have another device (NATE) on board that measures the same wind component as MESA. Our limited comparisons of these measurements show that they are in reasonable agreement. We suggest that a substantial amount of MESA wind data from these two satellites be processed in order to make a careful comparison with the NATE. On AE-C NATE does not measure the horizontal wind component, and we suggest that the MESA wind data for this satellite be processed in its entirety (for the elliptic orbit phase) and be placed in the UA file. Fortunately, the AE-C MESA data are the cleanest of all. (Author).

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