Data available from IRF Observatory IRF Observatory page Data license Magnetometers Riometers Ionosondes All-Sky Camera in Kiruna Infrasound measurements Mm-wave radiometer Weather station Kiruna Kiruna Geophysical Data ALIS (1993-2019) (Auroral Large Imaging System) ALIS_4D (2019–) Satellite Mars Express Aspera-3 data Astrid-2 Data Plots and Analysis Cluster EFW electric field data Freja F3H Data Archive For access…
60 years of space research For six decades, the IRF has contributed to discoveries and progress in Swedish and international space research. The Swedish Institute of Space Physics, IRF, was founded in 1957 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences under the name Kiruna Geophysical Observatory (KGO). However, measuring instruments have been located in Kiruna…
Cluster (EFW) The Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Uppsala is responsible for the EFW (Electric Field and Wave) instrument that measures electric fields and waves in space plasma. The instrument, which is on each of the satellites, examines how the Earth’s outer shield against space, the magnetic field, interacts with the solar wind. The…
SMART-1 The European Space Agency’s space probe SMART-1 was launched on 28 September 2003 from Kourou in French Guiana to study the moon from a polar orbit. SMART-1 (Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology) was ESA’s first smart probe in in a venture of small missions for advanced research technology. The Swedish Space Corporation…
Phobos 1 and 2 (ASPERA) Phobos 1 and 2 were two Russian interplanetary sonds which were launched on 7 July and 12 July 1988 respectively. The mission hade three scientific goals and corresponding phases: investigations of the sun and interplanetary space during the cruise phase; studies of Mars and its moon Phobos from a circular…
Freja (F3H, F4) The Swedish satellite Freja was launched on 6 October 1992 from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in China. Freja imaged the aurora and measured particles and fields in the upper ionosphere and the lower magnetosphere. Swedish, German, Canadian and American scientific instruments flew on the satellite manufactured by the Swedish Space Corporation….
Mars Express (ASPERA-3) Mars Express is the first European satellite to Mars. It was launched on a Russian rocket from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on 2 June 2003. The satellite reached its destination at Christmas the same year and went into an elliptical polar orbit around the planet. IRF in Kiruna has developed and built one…
Rosetta (ICA, LAP) The European Space Agency (ESA) launched its spacecraft Rosetta on 2 March 2004 from Kourou, in French Guiana. It reached its target, the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in 2014 with two instruments from IRF on board. For more than two years, Rosetta followed the comet in its orbit around the sun. IRF had two…
Ulysses (EPAC) Ulysses was a European space probe which studied the sun and the solar wind. As the first probe ever, it observed the sun’s poles and the solar system from above. The observations led, among other things, to the discovery that the solar wind behaves completely different over the sun’s poles than it does…
IRF contributes to our knowledge of space As a state-owned research institute, IRF works in a variety of ways to spread knowledge about space and our research. Interest in space activities from schools, the general public and the media is high. Teachers may need material for their students. Teenagers who are interested in space seek…