Thomas L. Garrard, Richard A. Mewaldt, Edward C. Stone, Eric R. Christian, Jonathon F. Ormes

NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) mission, scheduled for launch in August, 1997, will perform comprehensive studies of the elemental, isotopic, and ionic charge-state composition of energetic nuclei from solar wind energies (~1 keV/nuc) to galactic cosmic ray energies (~0.5 GeV/nuc). These studies will be performed at the L1 Lagrangian point, roughly one million miles sunward from the earth. ACE includes six high-resolution spectrometers that will measure the composition of energetic ions originating in the Sun, in the nearby interstellar medium, and in galactic cosmic ray sources. It also includes three monitoring instruments that will provide context in terms of solar wind plasma, magnetic field, and electron and proton fluxes in the environment. Some interplanetary environmental data will be telemetered in real time, in order to facilitate space weather forecasts by NOAA.

The ACE Science Center serves to facilitate collaborative work on data from ACE and to ensure that those data are properly archived and publicly available. The collaborators served are not limited to ACE project-funded investigators. The Science Center also acts as a single point of contact for mission operations, commands, telemetry, and related issues. Use of the Science Center's centralized services is intended to guarantee appropriate use of data formatting standards, improve communications, and reduce redundant effort in data processing. The data available will include a browse parameter file of quickly generated (i.e., preliminary and tentative) descriptors for use in selecting periods of special interest. These descriptors will include magnetic field and solar wind parameters, and count rates of the energetic nuclei cited above.