Rumba, Salsa, Smaba and Tango in the Magnetosphere
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ESCOUBET 24-08-2001 13:29 Page 2 r bulletin 107 — august 2001 42 ESCOUBET 24-08-2001 13:29 Page 3 the cluster quartet’s first year in space Rumba, Salsa, Samba and Tango in the Magnetosphere - The Cluster Quartet’s First Year in Space C.P. Escoubet & M. Fehringer Solar System Division, Space Science Department, ESA Directorate of Scientific Programmes, Noordwijk, The Netherlands P. Bond Cranleigh, Surrey, United Kingdom Introduction Launch and commissioning phase Cluster is one of the two missions – the other When the first Soyuz blasted off from the being the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory Baikonur Cosmodrome on 16 July 2000, we (SOHO) – constituting the Solar Terrestrial knew that Cluster was well on the way to Science Programme (STSP), the first recovery from the previous launch setback. ‘Cornerstone’ of ESA’s Horizon 2000 However, it was not until the second launch on Programme. The Cluster mission was first 9 August 2000 and the proper injection of the proposed in November 1982 in response to an second pair of spacecraft into orbit that we ESA Call for Proposals for the next series of knew that the Cluster mission was truly back scientific missions. on track (Fig. 1). In fact, the experimenters said that they knew they had an ideal mission only The four Cluster spacecraft were successfully launched in pairs by after switching on their last instruments on the two Russian Soyuz rockets on 16 July and 9 August 2000. On 14 fourth spacecraft. August, the second pair joined the first pair in highly eccentric polar orbits, with an apogee of 19.6 Earth radii and a perigee of 4 Earth radii. After the two launches, a quite lengthy The very accurate orbital injection and low fuel consumption mean verification phase for all spacecraft subsystems that spacecraft operations could continue for at least two more years and the payload of 44 instruments (Table 1) after the nominal two-year mission. started. The 16 solid booms, eight for the magnetometers and eight for communications, This is the first time that the Earth’s magnetic field and its environment were successfully deployed. A few days later, have been explored by a small constellation of four identical the spacecraft had to survive the first long spacecraft. Preliminary results show that, as predicted, with four eclipses, with up to 4 h of darkness, which they spacecraft we can obtain a detailed three-dimensional view of the did with very good performances from the Sun-Earth connection processes taking place at the interface onboard batteries. between the solar wind and the Earth’s magnetic field. Then started the verification phase for the 11 sets of instruments. This phase was After the Ariane-5 launcher failure on 4 June complicated by the fact that, to perform their 1996 and the destruction of the four original measurements, some instruments had to Cluster spacecraft, the Cluster scientists deploy very long wire antennas. These 44 m convinced the ESA Science Programme antennas altered the spin rate of the Committee (SPC) that it was essential for the spacecraft, which was incompatible with the European scientific community to rebuild the particle instruments that needed a fixed spin mission. This was agreed by the SPC in April rate. Altogether, more than 1100 individual 1997. In the meantime, SOHO, launched in tasks were performed on the instruments. December 1995, had begun to make some At the end of this phase, in early December, very exciting discoveries about the Sun and its a two-week ‘interference campaign’ was environment. Now, with the successful launch conducted to test how much the instruments of the rebuilt Cluster satellites, the STSP influenced each other. After successfully testing Cornerstone is complete and it is possible to all the instruments, the nominal operations combine these two missions in order to study phase began on 1 February 2001. Some of the the full chain of processes from the Sun’s results that are presented below were obtained interior to the Earth. during the commissioning and verification phase. 43 ESCOUBET 24-08-2001 13:29 Page 4 r bulletin 107 — august 2001 SC4 and SC1 separation 9 August 2000 16 July 2000 magnetopause and the polar cusp. In addition, unique data were obtained during a strong Figure 1. The two launches The Earth’s magnetosphere is a very large solar storm that occurred in November 2000. of the Cluster spacecraft on volume of space extending about 65 000 km in two Soyuz-Fregat rockets, the Sun’s direction, and more than two million km The bow shock on 16 July and 9 August in the opposite direction. The Earth’s magnetic The bow shock is the surface that forms in front 2000. An onboard camera took 27 pictures when field dominates this space. Without the of the Earth’s magnetosphere when the Rumba-SC1 separated from continuous flow of plasma (electrically charged supersonic solar wind slams into it at a speed Tango-SC4. Tango is shown particles) from the Sun, the Earth’s magnetic of about 400 km/s (around 1.5 million km/h). in the upper-right corner. field would be a dipole with a symmetric This is similar to the shock wave (or sonic The Earth can be seen in magnetic field around the polar axis. Instead, boom) when a plane flies faster than the speed the background the solar wind compresses the magnetosphere of sound in the atmosphere. The bow shock on the front side and shapes it into a long tail in slows down the solar wind and deflects it the anti-sunward direction (Fig. 2). During the around the magnetosphere. In the process, the first months of operations, the spacecraft orbits particles – electron and ions – are heated and allowed Cluster to visit key regions of the the strength of the magnetic field is increased. magnetosphere – the bow shock, the Intense electromagnetic waves are also produced at the shock. Table 1. The 11 instruments on each of the four Cluster spacecraft Figure 3 shows the electric waves detected by the WHISPER instrument during two crossings Instrument Principal Investigator of the bow shock by the four Cluster ASPOC (Spacecraft potential control) K. Torkar (IWF, A) spacecraft. On the plot, which covers a period of 40 minutes, the wave frequency is shown as CIS (Ion composition) H. Rème (CESR, F) a function of time. The power of the waves is EDI (Plasma drift velocity) G. Paschmann (MPE, D) plotted in false colours: red/brown for the most FGM (Magnetometer) A. Balogh (IC, UK) intense and blue for the less intense. PEACE (Electrons) A. Fazakerley (MSSL, UK) The bow shock is characterised by an intense RAPID (High-energy electrons and ions) P. Daly (MPAe, D) wave-emission enhancement below 20 kHz that is observed around 08:25 and 08:35 UT. DWP * (Wave processor) H. Alleyne (Sheffield, UK) The crossings do not occur at the same time EFW * (Electric field and waves) M. André (IRFU, S) for all spacecraft due to their different positions, which were about 600 km from each other at STAFF * (Magnetic and electric fluctuations) N. Cornilleau (CETP, F) that time. The right panel of Figure 3 shows the WBD * (Electric field and wave forms) D. Gurnett (IOWA, USA) spacecraft configuration at the first crossing, WHISPER * (Electron density and waves) P. Décréau (LPCE, F) when they were located on the right flank of the bow shock. A closer view of the spacecraft * Wave Experiment Consortium (WEC) configuration is shown in the middle-right and bottom-right panels. 44 ESCOUBET 24-08-2001 13:30 Page 5 the cluster quartet’s first year in space Figure 2. The Cluster orbit and the regions crossed during the first phase of the mission Figure 3. Bow-shock crossings by each of the four Cluster spacecraft on 22 December 2000. The left panels show the frequency/time spectrograms of the electric waves observed by the WHISPER instrument. Between about 08:25 and 08:35 UT, the spacecraft were in the solar wind. The diagrams on the right show the Cluster configuration during the bow-shock crossing, in an overall view (upper panel) and two enlarged views at 08:23 UT (middle panel) and 08:27 UT (bottom panel). The spacecraft and their trajectories are colour-coded: spacecraft 1 (Rumba-SC1) is shown in black, Salsa-SC2 in red, Samba-SC3 in green, and Tango-SC4 in magenta. Data courtesy of WHISPER Principal Investigator, P. Décréau (LPCE, France) Fp (kHz) 50 20 50 20 60 50 20 40 50 20 20 Signal level (dB0) ) 80 -3 Solar wind 40 0 Ne (cm Magnetosheath 08:05 08:15 08:25 08:35 08:45 Universal Time (HH:MM) 45 ESCOUBET 24-08-2001 13:30 Page 6 r bulletin 107 — august 2001 Since the bow shock usually moves faster than properties on quite short spatial scales, the spacecraft, the latter can be considered typically less than 600 km. Further studies will immobile with the bow shock is moving be conducted to understand the small-scale through the group. This motion is due to an structures of the bow shock. increase in the pressure of the solar wind (acting like a piston) on the magnetosphere, Figure 4 is another example of a bow-shock which pushes the bow shock closer to the crossing. Here the magnitude of the magnetic Earth. It is clear from the figure that spacecraft field is plotted as a function of time for the four 2 crossed the bow shock first, and then the spacecraft. In the supersonic solar wind other spacecraft followed. A few minutes later, (upstream of the bow shock), the magnetic field around 08:35 UT, the pressure decreased again is low, around 10 nT in this example, and and the bow shock crossed the spacecraft in high in the decelerated solar wind or the opposite direction.