Development of Software for the Analysis of Plasma Measurements Using the Retarding Potential Analyzer.

The purpose of this report is to describe a relatively fast computer algorithm to estimate plasma parameters from measured ion current flow to a planar ion sensor as a function of applied potential. It was developed for the preliminary processing of data obtained by the retarding potential analyzer (RPA) flown by the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory on board the DMSP satellites and on the HILAT satellite. For a sparse set of data points, such as the HILAT data, this method estimates the drift velocity with less uncertainty than it estimates temperature.