EGU25-11978, updated on 15 Mar 2025
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11978
EGU General Assembly 2025
© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Progress and Updates from the Plasma Observatory Synergies/Additional Science Working Group
Simone Benella1, Jean Francois Ripoll2,3, Cecilia Norgren4, Oliver Allanson5, Lorenzo Biasiotti6, Sara Gasparini4, Matina Gkioulidou7, Hantao Ji8, Yoshi Miyoshi9, Rumi Nakamura10, Alexander Pitna11, Dorota Przepiórka-Skup12, Adriana Settino10, Marina Stepanova13, Sergio Toledo-Redondo14, Drew Turner7, and Emiliya Yordanova15
Simone Benella et al.
  • 1INAF, IAPS, Rome, Italy (simone.benella@inaf.it)
  • 2CEA, DAM, DIF, Arpajon, France
  • 3UPS, CEA, LMCE, Bruyères‐le‐Châtel, France
  • 4University of Bergen, Norway
  • 5University of Birmingham, GB
  • 6INAF, OATS, Trieste, Italy
  • 7Johns Hopkins University, APL, MD, US
  • 8Princeton University, NJ, US
  • 9Nagoya University, Japan
  • 10University of Graz, Austria
  • 11CUNI, Prague, Czech Republic
  • 12CBK, Warsaw, Poland
  • 13University of Santiago, Chile
  • 14University of Murcia, Spain
  • 15IRFU, Uppsala, Sweden

Plasma Observatory (PO) is one of the three Class-M7 ESA missions currently in Phase A, and is designed to investigate fundamental processes at the base of energization and energy transport, such as collisionless shocks, plasma jets, wave, turbulence, and magnetic reconnection by gathering unprecedented multipoint and multiscale measurements of near-Earth plasma environments. The mission concept consists of a constellation of seven spacecraft in a double nested tetrahedron formation with a common vertex. The key science regions (KSRs) of the PO mission are Earth bow shock, foreshock, magnetosheath, magnetopause, tail plasma sheet and transition region. However, additional science regions (ASRs) such as inner magnetosphere, flank magnetopause, and pristine solar wind will be traversed by the constellation during the orbit, thus allowing for additional scientific targets. In this context, the Synergies/Additional Science Working Group aims to systematically investigate the major scientific advancements that can be achieved by leveraging the PO constellation in the various regions explored outside the KSRs, and to maximize the scientific return of the mission by broadening the PO science community by including space plasma scientists from other fields.

Since the magnetospheric system is a highly dynamic environment subjected to the solar wind forcing, especially during solar wind transient events, important physical processes can be studied by observing the magnetospheric response to them. New multiscale measurements of fields and particles at more than four points, for instance, are crucial for investigating the magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling for different levels of geomagnetic activity. Moreover, PO will provide measurements at the edge of the outer radiation belt, allowing to study fundamental plasma processes such as particle acceleration, transport and loss, wave-particle interactions and so forth. Large scale phenomena developing in ASRs such as solar wind and flank magnetopause, such as turbulence, reconnection, and instabilities are connected to ion and sub-ion scales where the energy is dissipated. In this spirit, simultaneous multiscale observations gathered in the ASRs are crucial for investigating the connection between MHD-scale plasma structure dynamics, turbulent energy transfer and the energy conversion occurring at small-scales. Beyond the ASRs observed in situ by the spacecraft constellation, there are strong synergies with laboratory activities. How does magnetic reconnection couple global MHD scales to local dissipation scales is an outstanding open question, some aspects of which can be addressed with the support of current and upcoming multiscale laboratory experiments that are, therefore, highly relevant for PO scientific objectives.

This contribution summarizes all the recent advancements made regarding the Synergies/Additional Science Working Group activities for PO and will discuss inputs and future perspectives supporting the mission Phase A.

How to cite: Benella, S., Ripoll, J. F., Norgren, C., Allanson, O., Biasiotti, L., Gasparini, S., Gkioulidou, M., Ji, H., Miyoshi, Y., Nakamura, R., Pitna, A., Przepiórka-Skup, D., Settino, A., Stepanova, M., Toledo-Redondo, S., Turner, D., and Yordanova, E.: Progress and Updates from the Plasma Observatory Synergies/Additional Science Working Group, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-11978, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-11978, 2025.