The scenic tour of the Venusian subsolar magnetosheath by BepiColombo
- 1IRAP, CNRS-UPS-CNES, Toulouse, France (moa.persson@irap.omp.eu)
- *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract
As Venus lacks an intrinsic magnetic field, such as Earth’s, and crustal magnetic fields, such as Mars’, its conductive ionosphere interacts directly with the solar wind, and an induced magnetosphere is created. Therefore, the Venusian magnetosheath is one of the few examples of a gas-dynamics dominated interaction region in the solar system. Measurements of this region can help us investigate the energy transfer from the solar wind to the ionosphere of non-magnetised bodies and properties of stagnated flow near the subsolar point, without complications from magnetic fields of planetary origin.
Even though several missions have visited Venus, none of them have been able to provide high time resolution plasma particle measurements of the subsolar magnetosheath. With the 2nd Venus flyby by BepiColombo on August 10th 2021, we had the rare opportunity to make a complete tour of the Venusian magnetosheath, using measurements from several plasma instruments onboard, as the flyby passed from the nightside flank towards the stagnation region near the subsolar point and out through a quasi-perpendicular bow shock. The observations were made during the extremely rare opportunity when the Solar Orbiter spacecraft was located upstream and could provide complementary solar wind observations, which showed very stable solar wind conditions during the scenic tour. This meant that we had the chance to, for the first time, probe the full spatial structure of the Venusian magnetosheath, without large temporal variation induced by solar wind fluctuations.
Part of this work is funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
M. Persson1*, S. Aizawa1, N. André1, S. Barabash2, Y. Saito3, Y. Harada4, D. Heyner5, S. Orsini6, A. Fedorov1, C. Mazelle1, Y. Futaana2, L.Z. Hadid7, M. Volwerk8, G. Collinson9, B. Sanchez-Cano10, A. Barthe1, E. Penou1, S. Yokota11, V. Génot1, J.A. Sauvaud1, D. Delcourt7, M. Fraenz12, R. Modolo13, A. Milillo6, H.-U. Auster5, I. Richter5, J.Z.D. Mieth5, P. Louarn1, C.J. Owen14, T.S. Horbury15, K. Asamura3, S. Matsuda16, H. Nilsson2 M. Wieser2, T. Alberti6, A. Varsani8, V. Mangano6, A. Mura6, H. Lichtenegger8, G. Laky8, H. Jeszenszky8, K. Masunaga3, C. Signoles1, M. Rojo1, G. Murakami3 1Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université Paul Sabatier - Toulouse III, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, Toulouse, France 2Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden 3Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan 4Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan 5Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany 6Institute of Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Rome, Italy 7Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (LPP), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Observatoire de Paris, Sorbonne Université, Université Paris Saclay, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris 8Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria 9National Aeronautic and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA 10School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK 11Department of Earth and Space Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Japan 12Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany 13Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Université Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Pierre Marie Curie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Guyancourt, France 14Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, UK 15Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK 16Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan
How to cite: Persson, M. and the The BepiColombo Venus flyby #2 team: The scenic tour of the Venusian subsolar magnetosheath by BepiColombo, Europlanet Science Congress 2022, Granada, Spain, 18–23 Sep 2022, EPSC2022-397, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2022-397, 2022.
