Abstract
The chapter describes a quarter century of applying the technique of seeding barium plasma clouds in ionosphere and magnetosphere, originating from an idea of Ludwig Biermann. After a few years of development, sounding rocket campaigns followed each other in close sequence, preferentially in the auroral zone and at the geomagnetic equator. Short narratives of the often exciting events happening during these campaigns are enriched with the physical motivations and results. Gradually, the objectives moved from the ionosphere to the upper magnetosphere and, by means of a satellite project, into the solar wind, culminating in the production of two artificial comets. On that way, one incurred some malfunctions, even one spectacular failure, but they were more than balanced by the discovery of a great number of hitherto unknown plasma and geophysical processes.
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Notes
- 1.
Filser letters, written in intentionally poor Bavarian dialect, were a humorous means of criticizing local politics in the leading Munich newspaper at the time. The name comes from a character in a book by the Bavarian writer Ludwig Thoma in 1910.
- 2.
With a lot of effort.
- 3.
Dead.
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Haerendel, G. (2022). The Mission. In: My Life in Space Exploration. Springer Biographies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10286-8_2
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