The Particle Environment Package on board JUICE: What Can We Learn about Callisto's Atmosphere and Space Environment?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
André Galli ◽  
Audrey Vorburger ◽  
Shane R. Carberry Mogan ◽  
Elias Roussos ◽  
Gabriella Stenberg-Wieser ◽  
...  

<p class="western">The JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) of the European Space Agency will investigate Jupiter and its icy moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, with the aim to better understand the origin and evolution of our Solar System and the emergence of habitable worlds around gas giants. The Particle Environment Package (PEP) on board JUICE is designed to measure neutrals, ions, electrons, and energetic particles over an energy range from eV to MeV.</p> <p class="western" lang="de-DE"><span lang="en-US">In the vicinity of Callisto, PEP will characterize the Jovian plasma environment and the outer parts of Callisto’s atmosphere and ionosphere. Roughly twenty Callisto flybys with closest approaches between 200 km and 5000 km altitude are planned over the course of the JUICE mission. This study aims at optimizing the scientific insight gained from the foreseen flybys by combining the input from the PEP science team and operation planning with recent model efforts for Callisto’s atmosphere, the plasma environment and the production of Energetic Neutral Atoms. The results of this study will inform both science operation planning of PEP and JUICE and they will guide future model development for Callisto’s atmosphere, ionosphere, and their interaction with the plasma environment.</span></p>

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Mauk ◽  
George Clark ◽  
Frederic Allegrini ◽  
Fran Bagenal ◽  
Scott Bolton ◽  
...  

<p>Energetic Neutral Atom (ENA) cameras on orbiting spacecraft at Earth and Saturn have helped greatly to diagnose these complex magnetospheres. Within this decade, the European Space Agency’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) mission will arrive at Jupiter and make ENA imaging a major thrust in helping to understand its complex magnetosphere. The present polar-orbiting Juno mission carries no ENA camera, but the energetic particle JEDI instrument is serendipitously sensitive to ENA’s with energies > 50 keV, provided there are no charged particles in the environment to mask their presence. Juno offers great service to the interpretation of both past and future ENA imaging with its orbit allowing unique viewing perspectives. Here we report on several components of ENA emissions that can probe the dynamical state of the regions involved, including the space environment of the orbit of Io, that of Europa, and Jupiter itself. A special focus here will be new observations of ENA emissions from Jupiter’s polar regions, the proper interpretation of which may end up being unique to the Juno mission, even after the JUICE mission.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Föhn ◽  
Marek Tulej ◽  
André Galli ◽  
Audrey Helena Vorburger ◽  
Davide Lasi ◽  
...  

<p>The search for life is one of the key topics in modern space science. The JUICE mission of the European Space Agency ESA will investigate Jupiter and its icy moons Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, with Europa being an example of a potentially habitable world around a giant gas planet. The Particle and Environment Package, PEP, on board of the JUICE spacecraft will investigate Jupiter’s icy moons and their environment. The Neutral gas and Ion Mass spectrometer NIM will investigate the icy moon’s exospheres to investigate their formation and the interaction processes of the exospheres with the moons’ surface and Jupiter’s strong magnetic field. It will enhance our understanding of the processes involved in the interactions of ion bombardment on the icy moons' surfaces. From these measurements, we will derive the moons’ surface composition and their formation processes.</p><p>NIM is a time-of-flight mass spectrometer with two particle entrances: an open-source entrance to measure neutral particles and ions directly and a close source entrance where neutral particles get thermalized before entering the sensor’s ionization region. This allows detecting of particles with high speeds. NIM has a specially designed ion storage source and an ion-mirror to double the flight distance of the produced ions by keeping the sensor at a minimal size.</p><p>In this contribution, we show calibration results of the NIM flight spare instrument on one hand operated with laboratory and on the other operated with flight electronics. We demonstrate the performance of NIMs ion-source, verify the performance of the closed-source antechamber. NIM has a demonstrated mass resolution of m/Δm 800.</p>


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1518
Author(s):  
Emilio Rapuano ◽  
Gabriele Meoni ◽  
Tommaso Pacini ◽  
Gianmarco Dinelli ◽  
Gianluca Furano ◽  
...  

In recent years, research in the space community has shown a growing interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI), mostly driven by systems miniaturization and commercial competition. In particular, the application of Deep Learning (DL) techniques on board Earth Observation (EO) satellites might lead to numerous advantages in terms of mitigation of downlink bandwidth constraints, costs, and increment of the satellite autonomy. In this framework, the CloudScout project, funded by the European Space Agency (ESA), represents the first time in-orbit demonstration of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) applied to hyperspectral images for cloud detection. The first instance of this use case has been done with an INTEL Myriad 2 VPU on board a CubeSat optimized for low cost, size, and power efficiency. Nevertheless, this solution introduces multiple drawbacks due to its design not specifically being for the space environment, thus limiting its applicability to short-lifetime Low Earth Orbit (LEO) applications. The current work provides a benchmark between the Myriad 2 and our custom hardware accelerator designed for Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The metrics used for comparison include inference time, power consumption, space qualification, and components. The obtained results show that the FPGA-based solution is characterized by a reduced inference time, and a higher possibility of customization, but at the cost of greater power consumption and a longer Time to Market. As a conclusion, the proposed approach might extend the potential market of DL-based solutions to long-term LEO or interplanetary exploration missions through deployment on space-qualified FPGAs, with a limited cost in energy efficiency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Benkhoff ◽  
G. Murakami ◽  
W. Baumjohann ◽  
S. Besse ◽  
E. Bunce ◽  
...  

AbstractBepiColombo is a joint mission between the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, JAXA, to perform a comprehensive exploration of Mercury. Launched on $20^{\mathrm{th}}$ 20 th October 2018 from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, the spacecraft is now en route to Mercury.Two orbiters have been sent to Mercury and will be put into dedicated, polar orbits around the planet to study the planet and its environment. One orbiter, Mio, is provided by JAXA, and one orbiter, MPO, is provided by ESA. The scientific payload of both spacecraft will provide detailed information necessary to understand the origin and evolution of the planet itself and its surrounding environment. Mercury is the planet closest to the Sun, the only terrestrial planet besides Earth with a self-sustained magnetic field, and the smallest planet in our Solar System. It is a key planet for understanding the evolutionary history of our Solar System and therefore also for the question of how the Earth and our Planetary System were formed.The scientific objectives focus on a global characterization of Mercury through the investigation of its interior, surface, exosphere, and magnetosphere. In addition, instrumentation onboard BepiColombo will be used to test Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Major effort was put into optimizing the scientific return of the mission by defining a payload such that individual measurements can be interrelated and complement each other.


Author(s):  
Claudio Miccoli ◽  
Alessandro Turchi ◽  
Pierre Schrooyen ◽  
Domenic D’Ambrosio ◽  
Thierry Magin

AbstractThis work deals with the analysis of the cork P50, an ablative thermal protection material (TPM) used for the heat shield of the qarman Re-entry CubeSat. Developed for the European Space Agency (ESA) at the von Karman Institute (VKI) for Fluid Dynamics, qarman is a scientific demonstrator for Aerothermodynamic Research. The ability to model and predict the atypical behavior of the new cork-based materials is considered a critical research topic. Therefore, this work is motivated by the need to develop a numerical model able to respond to this demand, in preparation to the post-flight analysis of qarman. This study is focused on the main thermal response phenomena of the cork P50: pyrolysis and swelling. Pyrolysis was analyzed by means of the multi-physics Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code argo, developed at Cenaero. Based on a unified flow-material solver, the Volume Averaged Navier–Stokes (VANS) equations were numerically solved to describe the interaction between a multi-species high enthalpy flow and a reactive porous medium, by means of a high-order Discontinuous Galerkin Method (DGM). Specifically, an accurate method to compute the pyrolysis production rate was implemented. The modeling of swelling was the most ambitious task, requiring the development of a physical model accounting for this phenomenon, for the purpose of a future implementation within argo. A 1D model was proposed, mainly based on an a priori assumption on the swelling velocity and the resolution of a nonlinear advection equation, by means of a Finite Difference Method (FDM). Once developed, the model was successfully tested through a matlab code, showing that the approach is promising and thus opening the way to further developments.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-126
Author(s):  
A. F. Purkhauser ◽  
J. A. Koch ◽  
R. Pail

Abstract The GRACE mission has demonstrated a tremendous potential for observing mass changes in the Earth system from space for climate research and the observation of climate change. Future mission should on the one hand extend the already existing time series and also provide higher spatial and temporal resolution that is required to fulfil all needs placed on a future mission. To analyse the applicability of such a Next Generation Gravity Mission (NGGM) concept regarding hydrological applications, two GRACE-FO-type pairs in Bender formation are analysed. The numerical closed loop simulations with a realistic noise assumption are based on the short arc approach and make use of the Wiese approach, enabling a self-de-aliasing of high-frequency atmospheric and oceanic signals, and a NRT approach for a short latency. Numerical simulations for future gravity mission concepts are based on geophysical models, representing the time-variable gravity field. First tests regarding the usability of the hydrology component contained in the Earth System Model (ESM) by the European Space Agency (ESA) for the analysis regarding a possible flood monitoring and detection showed a clear signal in a third of the analysed flood cases. Our analysis of selected cases found that detection of floods was clearly possible with the reconstructed AOHIS/HIS signal in 20% of the tested examples, while in 40% of the cases a peak was visible but not clearly recognisable.


1993 ◽  
Vol 137 ◽  
pp. 812-819
Author(s):  
T. Appourchaux ◽  
D. Gough ◽  
P. Hyoyng ◽  
C. Catala ◽  
S. Frandsen ◽  
...  

PRISMA (Probing Rotation and Interior of Stars: Microvariability and Activity) is a new space mission of the European Space Agency. PRISMA is currently in a Phase A study with 3 other competitors. PRISMA is the only ESA-only mission amongst those four and only one mission will be selected in Spring 1993 to become a real space mission.The goal of the Phase A study is to determine whether the payload of PRISMA can be accommodated on a second unit of the X-ray Multi-Mirror (XMM) bus; and whether the budget of the PRISMA mission can be kept below 265 MAU (’88 Economic conditions). The XMM mission is an approved cornerstone and is in a Phase A together with PRISMA.


2021 ◽  
Vol 217 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Mangano ◽  
Melinda Dósa ◽  
Markus Fränz ◽  
Anna Milillo ◽  
Joana S. Oliveira ◽  
...  

AbstractThe dual spacecraft mission BepiColombo is the first joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to explore the planet Mercury. BepiColombo was launched from Kourou (French Guiana) on October 20th, 2018, in its packed configuration including two spacecraft, a transfer module, and a sunshield. BepiColombo cruise trajectory is a long journey into the inner heliosphere, and it includes one flyby of the Earth (in April 2020), two of Venus (in October 2020 and August 2021), and six of Mercury (starting from 2021), before orbit insertion in December 2025. A big part of the mission instruments will be fully operational during the mission cruise phase, allowing unprecedented investigation of the different environments that will encounter during the 7-years long cruise. The present paper reviews all the planetary flybys and some interesting cruise configurations. Additional scientific research that will emerge in the coming years is also discussed, including the instruments that can contribute.


2018 ◽  
Vol 616 ◽  
pp. A2 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Lindegren ◽  
J. Hernández ◽  
A. Bombrun ◽  
S. Klioner ◽  
U. Bastian ◽  
...  

Context. Gaia Data Release 2 (Gaia DR2) contains results for 1693 million sources in the magnitude range 3 to 21 based on observations collected by the European Space Agency Gaia satellite during the first 22 months of its operational phase. Aims. We describe the input data, models, and processing used for the astrometric content of Gaia DR2, and the validation of these resultsperformed within the astrometry task. Methods. Some 320 billion centroid positions from the pre-processed astrometric CCD observations were used to estimate the five astrometric parameters (positions, parallaxes, and proper motions) for 1332 million sources, and approximate positions at the reference epoch J2015.5 for an additional 361 million mostly faint sources. These data were calculated in two steps. First, the satellite attitude and the astrometric calibration parameters of the CCDs were obtained in an astrometric global iterative solution for 16 million selected sources, using about 1% of the input data. This primary solution was tied to the extragalactic International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) by means of quasars. The resulting attitude and calibration were then used to calculate the astrometric parameters of all the sources. Special validation solutions were used to characterise the random and systematic errors in parallax and proper motion. Results. For the sources with five-parameter astrometric solutions, the median uncertainty in parallax and position at the reference epoch J2015.5 is about 0.04 mas for bright (G < 14 mag) sources, 0.1 mas at G = 17 mag, and 0.7 masat G = 20 mag. In the proper motion components the corresponding uncertainties are 0.05, 0.2, and 1.2 mas yr−1, respectively.The optical reference frame defined by Gaia DR2 is aligned with ICRS and is non-rotating with respect to the quasars to within 0.15 mas yr−1. From the quasars and validation solutions we estimate that systematics in the parallaxes depending on position, magnitude, and colour are generally below 0.1 mas, but the parallaxes are on the whole too small by about 0.03 mas. Significant spatial correlations of up to 0.04 mas in parallax and 0.07 mas yr−1 in proper motion are seen on small (< 1 deg) and intermediate (20 deg) angular scales. Important statistics and information for the users of the Gaia DR2 astrometry are given in the appendices.


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