The Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX) ion mass spectrometer (IMS) is a Bennett radio- frequency mass spectrometer designed to measure the concentration of contaminant and ambient ionospheric ions from 1 - 60 amu. The instrument is one of a suite of six onboard contamination instruments, which also includes a neutral mass spectrometer, pressure sensor, quartz crystal microbalance, krypton water vapor monitor, and particulate flashlamp experiment. The instrument is sensitive to an incoming ion flux on the order of 1 X 10⁷ ions/cm²s, which corresponds to an ion concentration of approximately 10 ions/cm³ for ionospheric ions that move at a speed of approximately equals 8 km/s with respect to the satellite. The IMS instrument and calibration are described in the paper. The purpose of the IMS calibration is to determine the detection efficiency for ionospheric and contaminant species that the MSX satellite is likely to encounter.

Date Published: 19 October 1994
PDF: 7 pages
Proc. SPIE 2261, Optical System Contamination: Effects, Measurements, and Control IV, (19 October 1994); doi: 10.1117/12.190139

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2261:
Optical System Contamination: Effects, Measurements, and Control IV
A. Peter M. Glassford, Editor(s)