The FAST Mission

A discussion of the design philosophy of a new breed of satellite to measure particles and fields in the magnetosphere. This book contains examples and descriptions of data gathered by the FAST mission instruments and should be a useful source to those working with results from this new observatory. FAST's data gathering approach - that utilizes an onboard computer to recognize acceleration physics events and store them in the on-board "burst memory" - have revolutionized our understanding of auroral microphysics. Such capabilities are described in this volume. This resource is intended for space physics researchers as well as satellite engineers.