Imaging and Rapid-Scanning Ion Mass Spectrometer (IRM) for the CASSIOPE e-POP Mission

The imaging and rapid-scanning ion mass spectrometer (IRM) is part of the Enhanced Polar Outflow Probe (e-POP) instrument suite on the Canadian CASSIOPE small satellite. Designed to measure the composition and detailed velocity distributions of ions in the ∼1–100 eV/q range on a non-spinning spacecraft, the IRM sensor consists of a planar entrance aperture, a pair of electrostatic deflectors, a time-of-flight (TOF) gate, a hemispherical electrostatic analyzer, and a micro-channel plate (MCP) detector. The TOF gate measures the transit time of each detected ion inside the sensor. The hemispherical analyzer disperses incident ions by their energy-per-charge and azimuth in the aperture plane onto the detector. The two electrostatic deflectors may be optionally programmed to step through a sequence of deflector voltages, to deflect ions of different incident elevation out of the aperture plane and energy-per-charge into the sensor aperture for sampling. The position and time of arrival of each detected ion at the detector are measured, to produce an image of 2-dimensional (2D), mass-resolved ion velocity distribution up to 100 times per second, or to construct a composite 3D velocity distribution by combining successive images in a deflector voltage sequence. The measured distributions are then used to investigate ion composition, density, drift velocity and temperature in polar ion outflows and related acceleration and transport processes in the topside ionosphere.