TY - JOUR
T1 - Momentum and Pressure Balance of a Comet Ionosphere
AU - Williamson, H. N.
AU - Nilsson, H.
AU - Stenberg Wieser, Gabriella
AU - Eriksson, Anders I.
AU - Richter, Ingo
AU - Goetz, C.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding support comes from Swedish Research Council Contract 2015-04187. We acknowledge use of NASA/GSFC's Space Physics Data Facility's OMNIWeb service for OMNI data and the Planetary Science Archive (PSA, http://archives.esac.esa.int/psa) for Rosetta MAG, LAP, MIP, and ICA data. We also acknowledge the use of AMDA (amda.cdpp.eu) for LAP and MIP data. C. Goetz is supported by an ESA Research Fellowship.
Funding Information:
Funding support comes from Swedish Research Council Contract 2015‐04187. We acknowledge use of NASA/GSFC's Space Physics Data Facility's OMNIWeb service for OMNI data and the Planetary Science Archive (PSA, http://archives.esac.esa.int/psa ) for Rosetta MAG, LAP, MIP, and ICA data. We also acknowledge the use of AMDA (amda.cdpp.eu) for LAP and MIP data. C. Goetz is supported by an ESA Research Fellowship.
Publisher Copyright:
©2020. The Authors.
PY - 2020/7/28
Y1 - 2020/7/28
N2 - We calculate the momentum flux and pressure of ions measured by the Ion Composition Analyzer (ICA) on the Rosetta mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The total momentum flux stays roughly constant over the mission, but the contributions of different ion populations change depending on heliocentric distance. The magnetic pressure, calculated from Rosetta magnetometer measurements, roughly corresponds with the cometary ion momentum flux. When the spacecraft enters the solar wind ion cavity, the solar wind fluxes drop drastically, while the cometary momentum flux becomes roughly 10 times the solar wind fluxes outside of the ion cavity, indicating that pickup ions behave similarly to the solar wind ions in this region. We use electron density from the Langmuir probe to calculate the electron pressure, which is particularly important close to the comet nucleus where flow changes from antisunward to radially outward.
AB - We calculate the momentum flux and pressure of ions measured by the Ion Composition Analyzer (ICA) on the Rosetta mission at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The total momentum flux stays roughly constant over the mission, but the contributions of different ion populations change depending on heliocentric distance. The magnetic pressure, calculated from Rosetta magnetometer measurements, roughly corresponds with the cometary ion momentum flux. When the spacecraft enters the solar wind ion cavity, the solar wind fluxes drop drastically, while the cometary momentum flux becomes roughly 10 times the solar wind fluxes outside of the ion cavity, indicating that pickup ions behave similarly to the solar wind ions in this region. We use electron density from the Langmuir probe to calculate the electron pressure, which is particularly important close to the comet nucleus where flow changes from antisunward to radially outward.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089381402&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1029/2020GL088666
DO - 10.1029/2020GL088666
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85089381402
SN - 0094-8276
VL - 47
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
IS - 15
M1 - e2020GL088666
ER -