Space weather from lunar orbit: The Deep Space Gateway as a platform for space plasma instruments

0521140 - ÚFA 2020 BE eng A - Abstrakt
Keyser de, J. - Dandouras, I. - Bamford, R. A. - Branduardi-Raymont, G. - Constantinescu, D. - Futaana, Y. - Grison, Benjamin - Lammer, H. - Leblanc, F. - Milillo, A. - Nakamura, R. - Němeček, Z. - Přech, L. - Roussos, E. - Taylor, M. G. G. T. - Carpenter, J. E.
Space weather from lunar orbit: The Deep Space Gateway as a platform for space plasma instruments.
16th European Space Weather Week. Brussels: Solar-Terrestrial Centre of Excellence (STCE), 2019.
[European Space Weather Week /16./. 18.11.2019-22.11.2019, Liège]
Institucionální podpora: RVO:68378289
Klíčová slova: space weather * solar wind * foreshock
Obor OECD: Fluids and plasma physics (including surface physics)
http://www.stce.be/esww2019/program/session_details.php?nr=12#

Space weather monitoring instruments at Sun-Earth L1 allow to sample the pristine solar wind, to have contin-uous coverage, and to issue an advance warning in the case of a space weather event. Disadvantages include the need for a dedicated platform and the lack of serviceability. Recently another opportunity has popped up in the form of the Deep Space Gateway, a crewed platform to be built by ESA, NASA and other international partners in order to enable lunar surface excursions as well as remote and in situ measurements, orbiting the Moon (probably in an elongated orbit in the plane perpendicular to the Earth-Moon line). ESA has convened a Topical Team for Plasma Physics on the Gateway that has reviewed the science potential of hosted payloads. This is particularly relevant for space weather instruments because telemetry, power, volume, and mass constraints may be relaxed compared to a Sun-Earth L1 mission. Instrument serviceability may be a bonus. Solar wind: Observations from lunar orbit can directly sample the solar wind during most of the Moon’s orbit around the Earth, except when the Gateway is in the lunar wake or in the Earth’s magetotail. When the Moon is located in the morning local time sector, foreshock-processed solar wind is observed. While the electrostatic environment of the Gateway is expected to be far from clean, the solar wind particles with their energies of 200-400 eV should be detectable, unless the electrostatic perturbations are too strong. Interplanetary magnetic field: The Gateway can be a suitable platform for measuring the interplanetary magnetic field. The main challenge is to deal with electromagnetic compatibility issues by combining multiple sensors and possibly using a boom. Energetic particles: The lunar vicinity is typical of deep space and suitable for studying galactic cosmic rays, solar energetic particles, and Jovian energetic electrons. Monitoring radiation inside and outside the Gateway is essential. Magnetosphere: During 5–6 days around full Moon the Earth’s magnetotail and escaping particles of atmospheric origin can be studied, but the lack of time continuity makes this less interesting for space weather applications. However, the magnetosphere can be monitored through remote sensing, using ENA imaging, solar wind charge exchange X-rays, plasmasphere EUV imaging, or exosphere Lyman-α imaging. Such techniques are less sensitive to the Gateway’s electromagnetic environment. They will view the magnetosphere from a constantly different angle. This could be extremely interesting in combination with magnetospheric imaging from, for instance, a polar platform in view of the possibility to do stereoscopic imaging. Lunar environment: Measurements from the lunar orbit also provide information about the lunar exosphere and about the solar wind interaction with the lunar surface, adding the lunar environment to the realm of space weather prediction that has up to now focused on Earth and its immediate vicinity.
Trvalý link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0305808