SPIDER-2 Sounding Rocket: Electromagnetic fields in Pulsating Aurora

The SPIDER-2 sounding rocket was launched into a Pulsating Aurora event in February 2020. It was launched from Esrange (67° 53 '22.79 " N, 21° 06' 15.00" E) and it recorded multipoint measurements of the plasma parameters and electromagnetic fields up to an altitude of almost 130 km. The in situ measurements obtained by the rocket and the eight free falling units were complemented by ground based optical instrumentation obtained by the ALIS4D sky imagers and a High Speed Camera. The main instruments carried by the main rocket were four electron probes, two ion probes, a dipole antenna for a wave propagation experiment and a photometer, while the free falling units carried four cylindrical Langmuir probes and four spherical electric field probes each, together with magnetometer sensors. 

Previously, plasma parameters such as electron density and temperature or ion thermal flux, collected by some of the instruments onboard the rocket, were presented and compared with ground based measurements. Now, the data collected by the electric field probes and the magnetometers has been despinned and analyzed with the goal to reconstruct the currents in the E region during the pulsating aurora event. Here, we present our study on the multi-point measurements of in situ electric and magnetic fields and their relation to the electrodynamics of the E-region.