The charge balance in the presence of meteoric smoke in the upper mesosphere under winter conditions - preliminary results

Three winter flights of ECOMA payloads took place before, during and after the peak of the Geminid meteor shower in 2010 with the aim of studying the effect of an enhanced flux of meteors in the atmosphere. This paper will use data from all the plasma and one particle instruments (ECOMA). We present and comment the performance of the instruments on these three flights and document a clear change of payload potential in the exact height range where negatively charged smoke particles are present.