Seminars

Seminars

Lecturer: Xiao-Dong Wang (IRF)
Date: 2020-10-15 10:00
Place: Aniara

Solar wind, Cometary Ion and ENA (SCIENA) sensor for the Comet Interceptor Mission

Xiao-Dong Wang
Swedish Institute of Space Physics

Only IRF and EISCAT staff can be physically present due to COVID-19, all other are welcome to join online.


The Comet Intercepter (CI) mission has been approved by ESA as its first F-class mission, targeting at a Dynamically New Comet (DNC) that enters the inner heliosphere for the first (a few) time(s) from the distant Oort cloud. Due to the little or no sublimation caused by the sun, DNCs are believed to best keep the prestine material of the solar system formation, even at their surfaces. The CI spacecraft will be launched to the Sun-Earth L2 point, and wait there for a good candidate target DNC to show up. Then CI will fly to the DNC, and perform a fly-by observation with a full suite of remote and in-situ instrumentation, oboard a main and two sub-spacecrafts. The Solar wind, Cometary Ion and ENA (SCIENA) instrument on the main spacecraft consisits of an ion spectrometer and an ENA imaging spectrometer. The ion sensor will measure the energy and mass spectra of ions from the solar wind and the comet; The ENA sensor will image the ENAs produced in the solar wind interaction with the comet. I will present the science questions and objectives as well as measurement objectives and requirements of the SCIENA instruments, and the current development status.

Created 2020-10-02 12:36:05 by Mats Holmström
Last changed 2020-10-14 10:26:09 by Uwe Raffalski