OSIRIS-3U (Orbital Satellite for Investigating the Response of the Ionosphere to Stimulation and Space Weather)

Study artificially create space weather events to research radiowave-plasma interactions.

Ground-based heaters will modify the atmosphere in order to create artificial space weather events that will be studied by OSIRIS-3U. The mission provides research into radiowave-plasma interactions and plasma transport.

1. Provide in situ and remote sensing measurements of the stimulated (heated) ionosphere produced by ground-based heaters.
2. Characterize the spatial extent of the heated region “bite out”.
3. Correlate in situ and remote sensing heated ionosphere measurements with ground-based measurements including incoherent scatter radars and ionosondes
4. Develop the aerospace workforce by training students in space systems engineering through hands-on projects
   1. Investigate anomalous electron number density enhancements in the night-time ionosphere
   2. Correlate in situ and remote sensing measurements at Arecibo’s conjugate point with heating events.

The use of the ionospheric heater at Arecibo, and if available the heaters at HAARP and EISCAT will allow the OSIRIS-3U mission to mimic natural ionospheric irregularities at defined locations and times, as well as perform research on active experiments. Combination of instruments to map ionospheric irregularities over Arecibo using a Langmuir Probe and two remote sensing instruments: the Coherent Electromagnetic Radio Tomography (CERTO) beacon and the Compact Total Electron Content Sensor (CTECS).