Solar Wind Composition Experiment
Illustration — Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin standing next to the deployed Solar Wind Composition Experiment during the Apollo 11 mission. The SWC was nicknamed the 'Swiss flag' experiment. The Solar Wind Composition Experiment (SWC) was an experiment deployed on the Moon during the Apollo program (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15 and 16).
Also recorded as SWC · S080 · S-080 · Solar Wind Composition By Foil Entrapment
Solar Wind Composition Experiment

Project Apollo Archive · AS11-40-5916 · Public domain
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Illustration — Astronaut Edwin E. Aldrin standing next to the deployed Solar Wind Composition Experiment during the Apollo 11 mission. The SWC was nicknamed the 'Swiss flag' experiment. The Solar Wind Composition Experiment (SWC) was an experiment deployed on the Moon during the Apollo program (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15 and 16).
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wikidata · Q2298367 · wikipedia · Solar Wind Composition Experiment
In this article
Overview
The aim was to measure and sample the solar wind outside the Earth's magnetosphere. It was the first definitive isotopic measurements of solar material. The SWC was proposed and designed by a Swiss team headed by Johannes Geiss and Peter Eberhardt of the University of Bern and Peter Signer of the Swiss Institute of Technology. It was manufactured by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Bern. The experiment was partially funded by the Swiss Government. The SWC experiment consisted of a sheet of ultra-pure aluminum foils (also with platinum metal segments on the last Apollo 16 experiment) erected on the Moon's surface with a telescopic pole. The sheet was to be exposed to the Sun as to measure the ion types and energies of the solar wind on the lunar surface. The time exposure was 77 minutes on Apollo 11, 18 hours and 42 minutes on Apollo 12, 21 hours on Apollo 14, 41 hours and 8 minutes on Apollo 15, and 45 hours and 5 minutes on Apollo 16. At the end of the exposure the foil was detached from the telescopic pole, placed in a Teflon bag, and brought back to Earth for analysis. The experiment was successful and provided accurate He, Ne and Ar isotopic compositions of the solar wind.
Star ejecta measuring device deployed during the Apollo moon landings
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Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Experimental determination of the solar wind composition. NASA Archive.
- 2.First 'flag' on the Moon?. esa.int. Agence spatiale européenne. 17 juillet 2019.
- 3.The Composition of Matter. Springer Science+Business Media. 2007. 978-0-387-74183-3.
- 4.Apollo confidentiel. De Boeck supérieur. 2019. 978-2-8073-2301-8.
- 5.Romain David. Messe, drapeau suisse, main tendue aux Soviétiques. Alain Cirou lève le voile sur les coulisses des premiers pas sur la Lune. 14 mars 2019.
- 6.L'incroyable histoire du «drapeau suisse» sur la Lune. Tribune de Genève. 14 juillet 2019.
- 7.Modern Switzerland. Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship (SPOSS). 1978.
- 8.Where No Man Has Gone Before. , NASA. 1989.
- 9.Robotic Exploration of the Solar System. Springer. 2. 2009. 978-0-387-78904-0.
- 10.Apollo 12. Springer. 2011. 978-1-4419-7606-2.
- 11.To a Rocky Moon. University of Arizona Press. 1993. 0-8165-1443-7.
- 12.Moon Missions. Plymouth Press. 1997. 1-882663-12-8.
- 13.article en auteur1=Colin Pillinger Solar Wind Exposure Effects Measured at the Lunar Surface nature présenté au lang en Lunar Symposium de la lang en British Astronomical Association à l'Université de Keele, les période 7 juillet- 1979- 8 juillet 1979 lien Journal of the British Astronomical Association 90 3 1980 232 1980JBAA...90..231P .
- 14.article en auteur1=Fritz Bühler auteur2=Peter Eberhardt auteur3=Johannes Geiss auteur4=J. Schwarzmüller Trapped solar wind helium and neon in nobr Surveyor 3 material Earth and Planetary Science Letters 10 3 février 1971 297–306 10.1016/0012-821X(71)90034-3 accès payant 1971E&PSL..10..297B s2cid=118777757 .
- 15.Mass Spectrometer Determinations of Solar Wind Helium, Neon, and Argon and Radiation Belt Helium. State University of New York at Stony Brook. 1976.
- 16.article en auteur1=Robert L. Warasila auteur2=Oliver A. Schaeffer Trapped solar wind He, Ne, and Ar and energetic He in nobr Surveyor 3 Earth and Planetary Science Letters 24 1 novembre 1974 71–77 10.1016/0012-821X(74)90009-0 accès payant 1974E&PSL..24...71W s2cid=128407576 .
- 17.article en auteur1=Roland Bodmer auteur2=Peter Bochsler auteur3=Johannes Geiss auteur4=Rudolf von Steiger auteur5=George Gloeckler Solar wind helium isotopic composition from SWICS/ULYSSES Space Science Reviews 72 1-2 avril 1995 61–64 10.1007/BF00768754 accès payant 1995SSRv...72...61B .
- 18.article en auteur1=George Gloeckler auteur2=Johannes Geiss Measurement of the Abundance of Helium-3 in the Sun and in the Local Interstellar Cloud with SWICS on Ulysses Space Science Reviews 84 1-2 avril 1998 275–284 10.1023/A:1005095907503 accès payant 1998SSRv...84..275G s2cid=28233505 .
- 19.chapitre en auteur1=George Gloeckler auteur2=Lennard A. Fisk auteur3=Johannes Geiss numéro D2.6-0003-16 The Unusual Behavior of Solar Wind 3He++ titre 41st COSPAR Scientific Assembly, abstracts from the meeting that was to be held 30 July – 7 August at the Istanbul Congress Center (ICC), Turkey, but was cancelled Committee on Space Research juillet 2016 2016cosp...41E.683G https://www.cospar-assembly.org/abstractcd/COSPAR-16/abstracts/D2.6-0003-16.pdf pdf .
- 20.chapitre en auteur1=Ansgar Grimberg auteur2=Fritz Bühler auteur3=Rainer Wieler auteur4=Peter Bochsler numéro 1537 titre Comparison of Solar Wind Noble Gas Data from Genesis with Apollo/SWC sous-titre New Results from Implantation Experiments titre 40th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPS XL ), held March 23–27, 2009 in The Woodlands, Texas Lunar and Planetary Institute mars 2009 2009LPI....40.1537G s2cid=9063935 https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2009/pdf/1537.pdf pdf .
- 21.article en auteur1=Nadia Vogel auteur2=Peter Bochsler auteur3=Fritz Bühler auteur4=Veronika S. Heber auteur5=Ansgar Grimberg auteur6=Heinrich Baur auteur7=Marian Horstmann auteur8=Addi Bischoff auteur9=Rainer Wieler Similarities and differences between the solar wind light noble gas compositions determined on nobr Apollo 15 SWC foils and on NASA Genesis targets Meteoritics & Planetary Science 50 10 octobre 2015 1663–1683 10.1111/maps.12503 2015M&PS...50.1663V s2cid=129840093 .
- 22.chapitre en auteur1=Roger C. Wiens auteur2=Donald S. Burnett auteur3=Kevin D. McKeegan auteur4=Antti Kallio auteur5=P. H. Mao auteur6=Veronika S. Heber auteur7=Rainer Wieler auteur8=Alex Meshik auteur9=Charles M. Hohenberg auteur10=Jennifer C. Mabry auteur11=Jamie D. Gilmour auteur12=Sarah A. Crowther auteur13=Daniel B. Reisenfeld auteur14=Amy Jurewicz auteur15=Bernard Marty auteur16=Robert O. Pepin auteur17=Bruce L. Barraclough auteur18=Jane E. Nordholt auteur19=Chad T. Olinger auteur20=John T. Steinberg numéro SH21A-1569 titre The GENESIS Mission: Solar Wind Isotopic and Elemental Compositions and Their Implications titre AGU date 2008 Fall Meeting. San Francisco, USA. 15th – 19th December 2008 Union américaine de géophysique lang en American Geophysical Union décembre 2008 2008AGUFMSH21A1569W s2cid=94523953 .
- 23.Ansgar Grimberg auteur2=Heinrich Baur auteur3=Fritz Bühler auteur4=Peter Bochsler auteur5=Rainer Wieler Solar wind helium, neon, and argon isotopic and elemental composition. Data from the metallic glass flown on NASA's Genesis mission Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 72 2 15 janvier 2008 626–645 10.1016/j.gca.2007.10.017 accès payant 2008GeCoA.72.626G s2cid=128418659 .
- 24.Deux pièces en hommage à une loco et à. 9 mai 2019.
- 25.Switzerland issues coin celebrating lunar connection. Coin World. 20 mai 2019.
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Elsewhere in Scientific instruments
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