The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) is a revolutionary mission that simultaneously investigates two of the most important overarching issues in Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (
The Solar Orbiter mission seeks to make connections between the physical processes occurring at the Sun or in the solar corona and the nature of the solar wind created by those processes which is subsequently observed at the spacecraft. The mission also targets physical processes occurring in the solar wind itself during its journey from its source to the spacecraft. To meet the specific mission science goals, Solar Orbiter will be equipped with both remote-sensing and in-situ instruments which will make unprecedented measurements of the solar atmosphere and the inner heliosphere. A crucial set of measurements will be provided by the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) suite of instruments. This suite consists of an Electron Analyser System (SWA-EAS), a Proton and Alpha particle Sensor (SWA-PAS), and a Heavy Ion Sensor (SWA-HIS) which are jointly served by a central control and data processing unit (SWA-DPU). Together these sensors will measure and categorise the vast majority of thermal and suprathermal ions and electrons in the solar wind and determine the abundances and charge states of the heavy ion populations. The three sensors in the SWA suite are each based on the top hat electrostatic analyser concept, which has been deployed on numerous space plasma missions. The SWA-EAS uses two such heads, each of which have 360° azimuth acceptance angles and ±45° aperture deflection plates. Together these two sensors, which are mounted on the end of the boom, will cover a full sky field-of-view (FoV) (except for blockages by the spacecraft and its appendages) and measure the full 3D velocity distribution function (VDF) of solar wind electrons in the energy range of a few eV to ∼5 keV. The SWA-PAS instrument also uses an electrostatic analyser with a more confined FoV (−24° to +42° × ±22.5° around the expected solar wind arrival direction), which nevertheless is capable of measuring the full 3D VDF of the protons and alpha particles arriving at the instrument in the energy range from 200 eV/q to 20 keV/e. Finally, SWA-HIS measures the composition and 3D VDFs of heavy ions in the bulk solar wind as well as those of the major constituents in the suprathermal energy range and those of pick-up ions. The sensor resolves the full 3D VDFs of the prominent heavy ions at a resolution of 5 min in normal mode and 30 s in burst mode. Additionally, SWA-HIS measures 3D VDFs of alpha particles at a 4 s resolution in burst mode. Measurements are over a FoV of −33° to +66° × ±20° around the expected solar wind arrival direction and at energies up to 80 keV/e. The mass resolution (m/Δm) is > 5. This paper describes how the three SWA scientific sensors, as delivered to the spacecraft, meet or exceed the performance requirements originally set out to achieve the mission’s science goals. We describe the motivation and specific requirements for each of the three sensors within the SWA suite, their expected science results, their main characteristics, and their operation through the central SWA-DPU. We describe the combined data products that we expect to return from the suite and provide to the Solar Orbiter Archive for use in scientific analyses by members of the wider solar and heliospheric communities. These unique data products will help reveal the nature of the solar wind as a function of both heliocentric distance and solar latitude. Indeed, SWA-HIS measurements of solar wind composition will be the first such measurements made in the inner heliosphere. The SWA data are crucial to efforts to link the in situ measurements of the solar wind made at the spacecraft with remote observations of candidate source regions. This is a novel aspect of the mission which will lead to significant advances in our understanding of the mechanisms accelerating and heating the solar wind, driving eruptions and other transient phenomena on the Sun, and controlling the injection, acceleration, and transport of the energetic particles in the heliosphere.
[1] We report on the time evolution of energetic neutral atom (ENA) emissions measured by the Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) during instances of compressed and expanded dayside magnetosheath. The ENA observations, taken during the passage of a corotating interaction region on 27 and 28 November 2010, are compared with in situ observations from the Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (THEMIS) spacecraft. IBEX's field of view (6.5 full width at half maximum) covered a wide region of the dayside magnetosheath for several days, providing continuous information from that region. The high sensitivity and high-energy resolution of IBEX instruments enabled unprecedented remote-sensing diagnostics of dayside magnetosheath ENA spectra at energies between~0.1 and~6 keV, which can be directly compared with various upstream parameters. The inferred plasma spectra from ENA observations showed characteristic suprathermal tails described by kappa distributions that correlate well with the solar wind cone angle and are in agreement with in situ observations, suggesting that the shock angle contributed to magnetosheath particle heating. Simultaneous in situ ion measurements in the dayside magnetosheath provided by THEMIS agree reasonably well with IBEX-inferred spectra, demonstrating synergy between remote IBEX ENA observations (global) and in situ measurements (local) for studying localized magnetospheric processes.
We report on the properties of suprathermal electrons observed over three discrete auroral arcs from a sounding rocket. By applying shifted kappa distributions and analyzing kappa parameters (density, temperature, and kappa), we found three novel characteristics to provide clues to understand the auroral acceleration mechanisms and magnetosphere‐ionosphere coupling processes. First, the auroral potential drop was proportional to the inverse square of kappa, consistent with previous theoretical investigations by Dors and Kletzing (). The observed dependency was slightly stronger than their calculations, suggesting additional contributions from nonlinear plasma processes. Second, the polytropic relation showed nonadiabatic (near isothermal) state of the source electrons. This can provide a restriction on the pressure balance issues in the plasma sheet convection. Third, there was a clear difference in the polytropic and kappa indices for the first arc as opposed to the second and the third arcs, suggesting different source locations in the plasma sheet for the precipitating electrons that cause these nearby arcs.
Shock parameters at Earth’s bow shock in rare instances can approach the Mach numbers predicted at supernova remnants. We present our analysis of a high Alfvén Mach number (M A = 27) shock utilizing multipoint measurements from the Magnetospheric Multiscale spacecraft during a crossing of Earth’s quasi-perpendicular bow shock. We find that the shock dynamics are mostly driven by reflected ions, perturbations that they generate, and nonlinear amplification of the perturbations. Our analyses show that reflected ions create modest magnetic enhancements upstream of the shock, which evolve in a nonlinear manner as they traverse the shock foot. They can transform into proto-shocks that propagate at small angles to the magnetic field and toward the bow shock. The nonstationary bow shock shows signatures of both reformation and surface ripples. Our observations indicate that although shock reformation occurs, the main shock layer never disappears. These observations are at high plasma β, a parameter regime that has not been well explored by numerical models.
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