Welcome to IRF The Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF) is a governmental research institute under the Ministry of Education. IRF conducts basic research and postgraduate education in space physics, space technology and atmospheric physics. IRF has 60 years of experience in developing instruments for space research projects and participates in several major international collaborative…
Published by the Swedish Institute of Space Physics Below you will find publications by IRF scientists, IRF’s report series, books, theses written by graduate students at IRF, strategic documents and information sheets about IRF. Publications by IRF scientists: 2023 / 2022 / 2021 / 2020 / 2019 / 2018 / 2017 / 2016 / 2015 / 2014 / 2013 / 2012 /…
JUICE (PEP and RPWI) The largest project ever for IRF is part of the European Space Agency mission JUICE, Jupiter ICy Moons Explorer. On board, two out of ten instruments will be Swedish and developed by IRF. On April 14, 2023 at 14.14 Swedish time, Juice was launched to Jupiter and its icy moons Europa, Callisto…
Astrid-2 Astrid-2 was launched on 10 December 1998 from Plesetsk in Russia and was the second ground-breaking Swedish low-budget micro-satellite project dedicated to auroral research. The satellite was developed by the Swedish Space Corporation in Solna. With a payload of ten kilograms, Astrid-2 managed to collect large amounts of research data from measurements of different…
Interball 1 and 2 (Promics-3) Interball 1 and 2 were Russian satellites launched in the mid 1990s to study different plasma processes in the Earth’s magnetosphere. Both satellites were equipped with a sub-satellite. The main satellites studied the impact of the solar wind on the geomagnetic tail of the Earth as well as various auroral…
Astrid – 1 (PIPPI, MIO, EMIL) Astrid-1 was launched on 24 January 1995 from Plesetsk in Russia and was groundbreaking as the first Swedish micro-satellite project. The satellite weighed 27 kg. The satellite studied processes that cause aurora, but instead of investigating charged particles, the measurements for the first time ever focused on detecting neutral…
Cassini (Langmuir probe) The launch of the spacecraft Cassini and the lander Huygens took place from Cape Canaveral in October 1997. Cassini reached Saturn and its icy moons in July 2004 and six months later Huygens was dropped onto the moon Titan. The Cassini mission ended with a planned crash into Saturn’s gas clouds on…
Munin (DINA, HiSCC, MEDUSA) At 19.24 Swedish time on 21 November 2000, IRF’s “nano-satellite” Munin was launched with a Delta-2 rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, USA. The launch was sponsored by the American space agency NASA. Munin was partly a research satellite for studies of the aurora and the Earth’s radiation…
Viking (V3, V4L) Viking was Sweden’s first research satellite. It was built and equipped primarily to investigate and understand auroral processes, such as how the particles that give rise to the aurora are accelerated and how they interact with different electric and magnetic fields. It also investigated the structure and dynamics of the aurora as…
PhD and Licentiate theses completed at IRF (1962-1999) At IRF in Kiruna Egeland, Alv, Studies of auroral reflections in the VHF band, Stockholm (Almqvist & Wiksell, 1962). PhD thesis Liszka, Ludwik, Auroral zone ionosphere investigations using transmissions from artificial Earth satellites, Stockholm (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1963). PhD thesis Gustafsson, Georg, Precipitation patterns of auroral particles…