The Geophysical Non-Equilibrium Ionospheric System Science (GNEISS) rockets, following on from the MICA and Isinglass missions, moves from the study of sheetlike auroral arcs using conjunctions of in situ measurements with ground-based imagery, to the study of non-idealized, non-sheetlike nightside discrete auroral structures. GNEISS will gather a fully instrumented multipoint multiplatform dataset enabling a case study of the three-dimensional and time-varying ionospheric volume surrounding a non- sheetlike discrete auroral structure, in the context of tomography- and auroral-imaged E-and-F-regions. The ideal target is a westward surge or any pre-midnight, discrete, intense-current auroral structure with distinct zeroth-order along-arc variation.
(Figure by Jules van Irsel) Mission overview diagram. (left) Trajectories (black), lattice and GBO sites (dots), lattice lines-of-sight (blue), and PFISR beams (red), viewed from the south of Poker Flat.