Physics Commons^™

A Time-Of-Flight Mass Spectrometer For Upper Atmospheric Measurements, Addison E. Everett, E. A. Syrstad

Graduate Student Posters

The mesosphere-lower thermosphere (MLT) is perhaps the least understood region of the earth’s atmosphere due to the difficulty of obtaining in-situ measurements. Access to the MLT is limited to high-speed sounding rockets for brief periods of at most a few minutes. Because of its wide mass range and high scan rate, Time-of-flight mass spectrometry (TOF-MS) has potential to resolve thin layers of diverse species in the MLT. However, because ambient pressures can reach into the millitorr range, TOF-MS has rarely been applied in the MLT due to its dependence on high voltages and microchannel plate (MCP) detectors. A novel dual …