SCIENCE RESEARCH

SCIENCE

   My graduate school adviser at The University of Maryland at College Park, Department of Physics and Astronomy, suggested that if I modeled the response of a Bennett Ion Mass Spectrometer to the charged particle spectra while the instrument was flying on a spinning spherical satellite, it might be possible to measure the "temperature" of the components of the charged particle plasma.
   Using FORTRAN and working NASA scientist, the late Henry Brinton, I first had to find a way to calibrate the instrument response to particles entering the spectrometer from different angles after Princeton University had not come up with a solution.  With that problem solved, the modeling program was done and the temperatures varied for a variety of positive ions.
    So, after a close match was obtained, my computer modeling program provided the first estimates of the temperatures of positive ions at an altitude of as they traveled along the magnetic lines from pole to pole.  I then presented the results in Washington, DC at a conference of the American Geophysical Union.                       .
   NOTE: This would have been an acceptable PhD thesis at any graduate school, but because I just missed passing the two-day qualifying exam because of sensitivity to the smokers in the room, I only obtained my masters degree in Aeronomy, a specialization of Space Physics.

The NASA Atmospheric Explorer B satellite, 

launched in 1966,  that provided data for my thesis

 research on the temperatures of ions in outer space.