The Visible Airglow Experiment on the Atmosphere Explorer E satellite has observed the resonantly scattered emission from Mg II and 2800 ¿ in the equatorial ionospher. Altitude profiles of the Mg+ ion distribution have been obtained from the inversion of the surface brightness measurements made on spinning orbits. These data show a daytime metallic ion layer between 150 and 200 km developing in the early morning and reaching about 100 ions/cm3 in the afternon. Mg+ ions are also seen in the F2 region mostly in the late afternoon hours within a feq degrees of th dip equator. The study of the vertical column density measured in the despun mode indicates that the amount of Mg+ in the F region is most variable in the afternoon hours at low dip latitudes. These results can be explained in part by the diurnal variation of the E¿B drift velocity which lifts the metallic ions up into the F region. The observations suggest that the vertical polarization electric field is not the primary transport mechanism extracting the Mg+ ions from the low-altitude source layer.