Ion Mass Spectrometers for GIRAFF Sounding Rocket Opportunity (IVMS)

This project was for the completion of two prototype Ion Velocity Mass Spectrometers (IVMS) instruments that were to fly on auroral sounding rockets. This work included design work for both the mechanical and the electrical aspects of IVMS as well as the building and testing of the completed sensor. Two IVMS prototypes were built, one for each of the two GIRAFF payloads. The IVMS uses a combination of electric and magnetic fields in order to separate ions by their velocity and energy, which allows for the separation of different masses. The GIRAFF sounding rockets flew into auroral events in February 2025 and the IVMS instruments were used to measure proton and oxygen ion precipitation within these aurora events.

One of the main advantages of IVMS is that it can separate different mass ions by first selecting for velocity using a circular Wein Filter (CWF) and then selecting for energy using an ElectroStatic Analyzer (ESA). This results in the ability to separate ions by mass per charge, however in the auroral ionosphere all the dominant ions have a change of +1, therefore IVMS can uniquely determine the ions mass. These flights on the GIRAFF sounding rockets will further our knowledge about how IVMS works in an actual space environment, which will allow us to further improve the capabilities of IVMS, while at the same time making it more robust and reliable. Then IVMS will be ready to be flown on future NASA space missions to measure other space plasmas, including the solar wind, lunar ions, Earth's auroral zones, and magnetospheres of other planets even. IVMS covers a fairly large energy range from an energy per change (E/Q) of 30 V to 30 kV, and has a field of view of 180 degrees x 5 degrees. The ability to control the electric field on the Wein filter allows IVMS to be able to measure a wide dynamic range of ion intensities, with the ability to measure over 8 or 9 orders of magnitude in ion fluxes.

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