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The ion drift meter (IDM) is a modified Faraday cup mounted on a
satellite which measures the bulk flow of the plasma in the
horizontal and vertical directions at right angles to the
satellite's direction of motion. Ion drift meters build by the
Center for Spcae Sciences have flown on NASA's Atmospheric
Explorer series (AE) in the 1970s, NASA's Dynamics Explorer-2
(DE-2) in 1981, the DMSP military satellites from F8 (launched
1987) through the present time, and will fly on the Taiwanese
satellite ROCSAT to be launched in 1998. satellite in
1981. Although there are slight differences in design between
each of these, essentially the overall configuration is the same
for all of them.
Additional information available at
"http://utd500.utdallas.edu/~hairston/idm.html"
[Summary provided by The University of Texas at Dallas]
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