MagneToRE: Mapping the 3-D Magnetic Structure of the Solar Wind Using a Large Constellation of Nanosatellites

Abstract

Unlike the vast majority of astrophysical plasmas, the solar wind is accessible to spacecraft, which for decades have carried in-situ instruments for directly measuring its particles and fields. Though such measurements provide precise and detailed information, a single spacecraft on its own cannot disentangle spatial and temporal fluctuations. Even a modest constellation of in-situ spacecraft, though capable of characterizing fluctuations at one or more scales, cannot fully determine the plasma’s 3-D structure. We describe here a concept for a new mission, the Magnetic Topology Reconstruction Explorer (MagneToRE), that would comprise a large constellation of in-situ spacecraft and would, for the first time, enable 3-D maps to be reconstructed of the solar wind’s dynamic magnetic structure. Each of these nanosatellites would be based on the CubeSat form-factor and carry a compact fluxgate magnetometer. A larger spacecraft would deploy these smaller ones and also serve as their telemetry link to the ground and as a host for ancillary scientific instruments. Such an ambitious mission would be feasible under typical funding constraints thanks to advances in the miniaturization of spacecraft and instruments and breakthroughs in data science and machine learning.

Strategies for Determining the Cascade Rate in MHD Turbulence: Isotropy, Anisotropy, and Spacecraft Sampling

“…Some progress has been realized along these lines by exploiting these features in the four spacecraft Cluster mission (Osman et al 2011). Significant advances in evaluating inertial range transfer rates will become available in the Helioswarm mission, comprising nine spacecraft and is currently under development (Klein et al 2019;Matthaeus et al 2019;Spence 2019) and a larger 24 point configuration envisioned in the MagneToRE approach (Maruca et al 2021).…”

Solar-wind/magnetosphere coupling: Understand uncertainties in upstream conditions

“…The next decades will provide an unprecedented view of the interplanetary environment thanks to the combination of in situ and remote sensing observations from recent missions, e.g. Parker Solar Probe (Fox et al, 2016), Solar Orbiter (Müller et al, 2013), BepiColombo (Benkhoff et al, 2010), and (possible) future ones, e.g., Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH;DeForest et al, 2022), Seven Sister (Nykyri et al, 2022), HelioSwarm (Klein et al, 2019;Matthaeus et al, 2019), Magnetic Topology Reconstruction Explorer (MagneToRE; Maruca et al, 2021), Interplanetary Mesoscale Observatory (InterMeso; Allen et al, 2022), Solar-Terrestrial Observer for the Response of the Magnetosphere (STORM; Sibeck et al, 2018). These missions have the capability to resolve transverse gradients, spatial scales, and temporal dynamics of the solar wind as well as provide new wealth of data for the characterization of "uncertainties" in combination with spacecrafts such as Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorm (THEMIS Burch and Angelopoulos, 2009), Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS; Burch et al, 2016;Fuselier et al, 2016), Cluster (Escoubet et al, 2001) and possibly Magnetospheric Constellation (MagCon; Kepko et al, 2022) that orbit closer to the magnetopause.…”

Interplanetary mesoscale observatory (InterMeso): A mission to untangle dynamic mesoscale structures throughout the heliosphere

“…Mesoscale dynamics are fundamental to solar wind dynamics, enabling interaction between macro and micro scale dynamics, but currently fall within an observational gap. Left panel from Allen et al (2020), middle panel adapted from Maruca et al (2021), and right panel from Lazarian et al (2020). InterMeso targets fundamental knowledge gaps of solar wind dynamics and structure at these critical scale lengths.…”