THE ACE SCIENCE CENTER




The ACE Science Center (ASC) serves to facilitate collaborative work on data from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft and to ensure that those data are properly archived and publicly available. The collaborators served are not limited to ACE project-funded investigators.

The primary functions of the ACE Science Center are to handle Level 1 and Browse Data processing for the ACE Mission, and to distribute science data from ACE to the community. Other functions performed by the Science Center include preparing all science data for archiving at the NASA Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) and acting as the archive for all ACE data during the lifetime of the mission. The ASC also acts as an interface between the project scientists and the Flight Operations Team. The Science Center's centralized services are intended to guarantee appropriate use of data formatting standards, improve communications, and reduce redundant effort in data processing.

March 2015: ACE Magnetometer spectrograms now online

February 2015: A major new release of the SWICS Level 2 data, using completely redesigned analysis methods

Oct 23, 2012: SWEPAM data status update

The SWEPAM observations, in particular the proton density and to lesser extent the temperature, became increasing sparse starting in 2010 as the primary channel electron multiplier (CEM) detectors have aged. Now, many years past the original planned mission lifetime, these Ulysses spare detectors do not provide adequate gain to make good measurements. In response, the ACE science team has developed and implemented, starting Oct 23 2012, an innovative mission operations concept that more frequently repoints the ACE spacecraft's spin axis further away from the Sun. This allows other, stronger CEMs that have received significantly less total fluence to measure the solar wind; this operational improvement has significantly increased the frequency of good quality SWEPAM observations, back to levels not seen in several years.
For more details, please read this analysis by the SWEPAM team of The Effect of ACE Spacecraft Repointing on SWEPAM Calculated Moments

October 2012: New, better-organized presentation of ACE Level 3 Data Products

January 27 2009: ACE Level 3 Summary Plots - a variety of summary plots covering the whole mission

Latest 4-day ACE Browse Plot


Contact Us

ACE Home Page

ACE Science Center Paper - Published in Space Science Reviews, Volume 86, Nos. 1-4, 1998.



Last Updated: April 1 2013