Detection of solar wind at synchronous orbit.

During the March 8, 1970 geomagnetic storm, the synchronous spacecraft ATS-5 spent more than 6 hours outside the magnetosphere. At the height of the storm, ATS was fortuitously located near local noon when both the on-board magnetometer and the UCSD plasma detector indicated that the environment had changed from typical magnetosheath (i.e. shocked) to interplanetary character (unshocked). This situation lasted for approximately 3 minutes at 2000 UT before the spacecraft was again immersed in the magnetosheath. Ground-based magnetograms show high activity, but no unusual features at this time. In the magnetosheath the component of magnetic field parallel to the earth axis was about -60 gamma with about plus or minus 30 gamma variations. Outside the magnetosheath, this dropped to an indicated 15 gamma with no large variations.