NASA’s Endurance sounding rocket (yard No. 47.001) will launch from Ny Ålesund, Svalbard in May 2022 on a solid fueled Oriole III-A launch vehicle. Its $\sim19$ minute flight will carry it to an altitude of $\sim780~\text{km}$ above Earth’s sunlit polar cap. Its objective is to make the first measurement of the weak “ambipolar” electric field generated by Earth’s ionosphere. This field is thought to play a critical role in the upwelling and escape of ionospheric ions, and thus potentially in the evolution of Earth’s atmosphere. The results will enable us to determine the importance to ion escape of this previously unmeasured fundamental property of our planet, which will aid in a better understanding of what makes Earth habitable. Endurance will carry six science instruments (with 16 sensors) that will measure the total electrical potential drop below the spacecraft, and the physical parameters required to understand the physics of what generates the ambipolar field. The mission will be supported by simultaneous observations of solar and geomagnetic activity.

Abstract Photoelectrons are crucial to atmospheric physics. They heat the atmosphere, strengthen planetary ambipolar electric fields, and enhance the outflow of ions to space. However, there exist only a handful of measurements of their energy spectrum near the peak of photoproduction. We present calibrated energy spectra of pristine photoelectrons at their source by a prototype Dual Electrostatic Analyzer (DESA) instrument flown on 11 July 2021 aboard the Dynamo‐2 sounding rocket (NASA № 36.357). Photopeaks arising from 30.4 nm He‐II spectral line were observed throughout the flight above 120 km. DESA also successfully resolved the rarely observed N2 absorption feature. Below 10 eV observations were in good agreement with the GLOW suprathermal electron. Above 10 eV fluxes substantially deviated from the model by as much as an order of magnitude.

and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) for in situ measurements of ions and neutrals H, He, N, O, N2, O2 with M/dM of approximately 12 at an incoming energy range of 0-50eV. The INMS is based on front end optics, post acceleration, gated time of flight, ESA and CEM or MCP detectors. The compact sensor has a dual symmetric configuration with the ion and neutral sensor heads on opposite sides and with full electronics in the middle. The neutral front end optics includes thermionic emission ionization and ion blocking grids, and the ion front end optics includes spacecraft potential compensation grids. The electronics include front end, fast gating, HVPS, ionizer, TOF binning and full bi directional C&DH digital electronics. The data package includes 400 mass bins each for ions and neutrals and key housekeeping data for instrument health and calibration. The data sampling can be commanded as fast as 10 msec per frame (corresponding to ~80 m spatial separation) in burst mode, and has significant onboard storage capability and data compression scheme. Experimental data from instrument testing with both ions and neutrals will be presented. INMS was recently launched on The ExoCube 3U CubeSat mission (SMAP launch) on January 31, 2015. A second upgraded INMS is scheduled to be delivered August 2015 to Dellingr 6U CubeSat mission to be launched in 2016. This miniaturized instrument fills a 1.5U volume, weighs only 560 g and requires nominal power of 1.6W. Summary GSFC INMS Team: Marcello Rodriguez, Nick Paschalidis, Sarah Jones, Ed Sittler, Dennis Chornay, Paulo Uribe, Tim Cameron, Bobby Nanan