HelioSwarm: Unlocking the Multiscale Mysteries of Weakly-Collisional Magnetized Plasma Turbulence and Ion Heating
Abstract
In this presentation, we discuss the HelioSwarm mission and its implementation strategy. HelioSwarm is a NASA MidEx mission concept designed to reveal the three-dimensional, dynamic mechanisms controlling the physics of turbulence, a ubiquitous process occurring throughout the heliosphere and the universe at large. HelioSwarm resolves the transfer and dissipation of turbulent energy in weakly-collisional magnetized plasmas with a novel configuration of spacecraft in the solar wind. These simultaneous multi-point, multi-scale measurements of space plasmas allow us to reach closure on two science goals comprised of six science objectives: (1) reveal how turbulent energy is transferred in the most probable, undisturbed solar wind plasma and distributed as a function of scale and time; (2) reveal how this turbulent cascade of energy varies with the background magnetic field and plasma parameters in more extreme solar wind environments; (3) quantify the transfer of turbulent energy between fields, flows, and ion heat; (4) identify thermodynamic impacts of intermittent structures on ion distributions; (5) determine how solar wind turbulence affects and is affected by large-scale solar wind structures; and (6) determine how strongly driven turbulence differs from that in the undisturbed solar wind. HelioSwarm transforms our understanding of plasma turbulence using a first-ever "swarm" of 9 spacecraft, comprised of a "hub" spacecraft and 8 "node" spacecraft. The swarm spacecraft co-orbit in a P/2 lunar resonant Earth orbit, with a ~2 week period, an apogee of ~61Re and perigee of ~12Re. Swarm design and on-board propulsion produce inter-spacecraft separations both along and across the Sun-Earth line in the regions of interest. As they co-orbit, the swarm's 36 baseline separations slowly evolve, enabling the swarm configurations to simultaneously sample the turbulent cascade at multiple points with inter-spacecraft separations ranging from fluid scales (1000's of km) to sub-ion kinetic scales (10's of km). Each node possesses an identical instrument suite that consists of a Faraday cup, a fluxgate magnetometer, and a search coil magnetometer. The hub has the same instrument suite as the nodes, plus an ion electrostatic analyzer. Other HelioSwarm mission details will also be described.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFMSH11B..04S
- Keywords:
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- 2134 Interplanetary magnetic fields;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS;
- 2159 Plasma waves and turbulence;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS;
- 2164 Solar wind plasma;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS;
- 4415 Cascades;
- NONLINEAR GEOPHYSICS