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Conclusions and Assessment
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The detection threshold is ~100 nT, sufficient to sense large scale currents at least for moderate
activity. The time resolution is variable, being a few seconds to a few minutes on a given satellite.
By combining data from all satellites meaningful statistics can be derived on ~1 hour time scales.
Initial validations show that expected signatures of large scale currents are observed on multiple satellites in a fixed geophysical location. The distribution of perturbations agrees with a high latitude current system, >60? magnetic latitude as expected. Moreover, the sense of the perturbations agrees with expectations from statistical studies. In subsequent work standard summary products have been developed that provide information on the latitude, intensity and relative intensity of currents in day/night and northern/southern hemispheres. These are available in both electronic graphical and ASCII digital form. Techniques to derive distributions of field aligned currents have also been developed and analysis completed for a number of cases. Analysis of additional cases for collaborative research is presently supported on a request basis. Quantitative measures of the reliability of the currents are presently under development as are capabilities to provide on- line processing.
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