Rules of the Road

FIELDS Level 2 (and higher) data products are open to all scientists and the general public.  Data products are released on a regular schedule. As a general rule, data older than the latest orbit will be made publicly available.  However, orbital configuration and downlink availability can mean that data from a given orbit may not be downloaded until after the following orbit.

A basic timeline of the PSP mission is available at the mission website.

Contacting FIELDS team

FIELDS data users should contact the PI (Stuart D. Bale; bale@berkeley.edu) with a short description of the nature of your study and the data that you intend to use. Contacting the PI near the start of your project will allow us to:

  • alert you of instrumental or spacecraft effects that could possibly result in misinterpretation of FIELDS data products 
  • direct you to FIELDS team experts who can offer assistance on interpreting the data
  • connect you with one of several Working Groups which focus on specific PSP science and instrument topics.  The purpose of the working groups is to encourage collaboration, share expertise, and coordinate and deconflict analysis projects and results. Working groups are open to external scientists.

FIELDS data users should provide the FIELDS PI with a copy of any papers including FIELDS data, on submission and again on publication.

Citation and Acknowledgement

All publications which use FIELDS data should include a statement in the Acknowledgments including the NASA contract number. An example of a suitable statement is “The FIELDS experiment on the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft was designed and developed under NASA contract NNN06AA01C.”

All publications which use FIELDS data should cite the FIELDS instrument paper:

  • Bale et al., The FIELDS instrument suite for Solar Probe Plus, Space Science Reviews, DOI: 10.1007/s11214-016-0244-5, 2016.

Publications using RFS data should cite the RFS paper:

  • Pulupa et al., The Solar Probe Plus Radio Frequency Spectrometer: Measurement requirements, analog design, and digital signal processing, J. Geophys. Res., DOI: 10.1002/2016JA023345, 2017.

Publications using DFB data should cite the DFB paper:

  • Malaspina et al., The Digital Fields Board for the FIELDS instrument suite on the Solar Probe Plus mission: Analog and digital signal processing, J. Geophys. Res., DOI: 10.1002/2016JA022344, 2016.

Publications using SCM data should cite the SCM paper:

  • Jannet et al., Measurement of Magnetic Field Fluctuations in the Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter Missions, J. Geophys. Res., DOI: 10.1029/2020JA028543, 2020

Publications using merged Search Coil And Magnetometer (SCAM) data should cite the SCaM paper:

  • Bowen et al., A Merged Search-Coil and Fluxgate Magnetometer Data Product for Parker Solar Probe FIELDS, J. Geophys. Res., DOI: 10.1029/2020JA027813, 2020

Publications using Simplified Quasi-Thermal Noise (SQTN) data should site the SQTN paper:

  • Moncuquet et al., First In Situ Measurements of Electron Density and Temperature from Quasi-thermal Noise Spectroscopy with Parker Solar Probe/FIELDS, ApJ Supplement Series, DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/ab5a84, 2020

Publications using Level 3 Dust data should site the dust database paper:

  • Malaspina et al., A Dust Detection Database for the Inner Heliosphere Using the Parker Solar Probe Spacecraft, ApJ Supplement Series, DOI: 10.3847/1538-4365/acca75, 2023