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			 **   THE GEM MESSENGER   **
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						     Volume 9, Number 1
						     January 13, 1999


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ASTRID-2 NOW FULLY OPERATIONAL
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From: Lars Blomberg (blomberg at plasma.kth.se)

The Swedish auroral microsatellite Astrid-2 is ready for its science
mission. The satellite was launched on 10 December 1998 from Plesetsk,
Russia, and is now fully operational with all scientific instruments
deployed. The payload consists of four spherical probes for electric
field measurements, a tri-axial flux-gate magnetometer, an ion and
electron spectrometer, Langmuir probes for plasma density and density
fluctutation diagnostics, and two spin-scanning photometers for UV
auroral photometry. Spacecraft attitude is determined by a star imager.

The instrumentation is foreseen to operate more or less continuously
throughout the mission whose nominal life time is one year. Scientific
collaboration and coordinated measurements are invited.

The Astrid-2 platform has been developed and built by the Swedish Space
Corporation and the payload has been provided by the Swedish Institute
of Space Physics, Kiruna and Uppsala; the Technical University of Denmark,
Copenhagen; Max-Planck-Institute for Aeronomy, Lindau; Southwest
Research Institute, San Antonio; and by the Alfven Laboratory,
Stockholm. A telemetry station in Antarctica is run by the University of
Natal, Durban. The Alfven Laboratory has the overall scientific
responsibility of the mission.

More information may be found in a preprint that can be downloaded
(PostScript format) from http://www.plasma.kth.se/~blomberg/astrid2.zip .

Lars Blomberg, Goran Marklund, Per-Arne Lindqvist
  Alfven Laboratory, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
Olle Norberg
  Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna
Bengt Holback
  Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala

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