Measurement and simulation of high voltage-wake interactions

Summary form only given. The OEDIPUS C sounding rocket was launched from the Poker Flat rocket range on Julian day 311, 1995 at 06:38:17 UT. Oedipus C was a tethered mother-son payload with a 50 kHz to 8.0 MHz stepped frequency transmitter on the forward payload and a HF receiver on the aft payload. In the course of the upleg of the flight the tether was deployed to a distance of approximately 1 km. At apogee the tether was cut. As part of the compliment of environmental sensors, multiangular electrostatic analyzers were flown on both the forward and aft payloads. These detectors compiled 10, 32 point electron spectra/second over the energy range from 20 eV to 20 keV and in 8 angular zones defining a detection fan of 1440/spl deg/ by 100/spl deg/. The HF transmitter was normally swept through 165 frequency steps every 5 seconds. The stepping of the electrostatic analyzer was synchronized to the stepping of the transmitter such that the analyzer measured at a fixed frequency at each energy step. The output pulses of the electrostatic analyzers were also processed by an on-board particle correlator that measured bunching in the electron flux produced by coherent wave-particle interactions. Throughout the flight the analyzer in the forward payload measured large increases in the electron Bur at energies up to several keV and over a wide angular range whenever the transmitter was emitting at approximately the local electron gyrofrequency. Weaker effects were seen at low altitudes at harmonics of the local electron gyrofrequency. Similar effects were seen on the aft payload for separation up to several hundred meters.