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Cassini's Magnetometer at Saturn

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Cassini's Magnetometer at Saturn CASSINI–HUYGENS: MAGNETOMETER Cassini’s magnetometer at Saturn Michele Dougherty and the Cassini magnetometer team pick some highlights of this successful discovery mission. xactly one month shy of 20 years after its 15 October 1997 launch from Cape ECanaveral, the Cassini–Huygens (hereafter referred to as Cassini) NASA– ESA spacecraft will end its life by burning up in the atmosphere of Saturn. This con- 1 Plumes of water ice and vapour erupting from locations along the “tiger stripes” near the south pole of clusion has been designed to protect any of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) the potentially habitable moons of Saturn (in particular Enceladus and Titan) from science return from other instruments, but et al. 2017). On this first Cassini fly-by, MAG possible contamination by the spacecraft. It were accepted as necessary for the MAG observations revealed a clear perturbation ends a mission that has been a resounding team to fulfil their science objectives. near the moon, which was interpreted as and demonstrable success: many scien- To cover all of the science return from a signature of the nearly corotating Saturn tific discoveries, thousands of published the MAG team is beyond the scope of this plasma, and the magnetic field that was research papers, hundreds of graduated article. Instead, we focus on some of the “frozen in” to this plasma, being deflected PhD students, and widespread excitement highlights, including the MAG-led discov- and slowed around the moon; Enceladus and inspiration among the general public ery of a water vapour plume at Enceladus; seemed to be acting as an unexpectedly and schoolchildren alike. The Cassini mis- planetary-period oscillations large obstacle. In addition, sion has been a truly inter national endeav- which fill the magnetosphere “Enceladus is one of there was an increase in our in which thousands of scientists and and potentially mask the sig- the prime potentially ion cyclotron wave activity engineers from around the world, and from nals of the internal dynamo habitable locations in produced by water group many different cultures, worked together planetary magnetic field; our solar system” ions near Enceladus, imply- towards a common goal. field-aligned currents (FACs) ing that the moon itself was The UK-led magnetometer (MAG) team, and the resulting aurora. We will also adding water group ions to the flowing, has Imperial College as the principal highlight results related to the moon Titan ambient magnetospheric plasma. investigator institute, UK co-investigators and the magnetosphere of Saturn. We end The second planned Enceladus fly-by based at the University of Leicester and the article with a description of the end-of- on 8 March 2005 reached a closer alti- University College London, and inter- mission science orbits – the “Grand Finale” tude of 500 km. MAG data revealed very national co-investigators from Germany, (figure 9) – which were designed with MAG similar signatures, both the “draping” of Hungary and the United States. The instru- and gravity observations in mind. the magnetic field around the moon and ment is a dual-sensor suite, with a fluxgate an increase in the power of water group magnetometer (FGM) designed and built Discovering the plume at Enceladus ion cyclotron waves. This confirmed the at Imperial College, and a vector helium/ On 17 February 2005, the first targeted instinct of the team that there was some scalar sensor (V/SHM) designed and built fly-by of the moon Enceladus took place atmospheric interaction – with unknown at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Califor- at a distance of 1265 km (the diameter of source – at Enceladus. Because the gravita- nia. These sensors are located halfway Enceladus is 500 km). Before this, ground- tional field of Enceladus is relatively small, along and at the end of the spacecraft’s based observations and data from the such a source would need to be strong 11 m magnetometer boom. A year after Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft (in the late in order to maintain the presence of an Saturn orbit insertion, which occurred on 1970s and early 1980s) had indicated that “atmosphere” for both fly-bys. The team 1 July 2004, the V/SHM stopped operating, the surface of Enceladus had relatively produced a schematic of the potential dif- resulting in a much more complicated data few craters and was mainly smooth with fuse, extended atmosphere (figure 2a). calibration procedure, involving regular some extensive linear cracks. The surface Based on the observations from these rolls of the entire spacecraft in a quiet back- was dominated by water ice and seemed two fly-bys, the MAG team made the case ground magnetic field. These rolls must be to have been resurfaced. It had also been to the Cassini Project that there was poten- executed about two distinct axes to enable postulated that Enceladus could be the tially an atmosphere of water group ions at calibration of FGM data. This illustrates the source of the material in Saturn’s extensive, Enceladus, which was holding off the Sat- collaborative approach within the Cassini diffuse E ring (for a summary of the history urn field lines from the surface of the moon. team: these calibration rolls impact on the of Enceladus observations, see Dougherty The team requested that the third fly-by, Downloaded4.36 from https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/58/4/4.36/3988906 A&G • August 2017 • Vol. 58 • aandg.org by Institute of Child Health/University College London user on 10 January 2018 CASSINI–HUYGENS: MAGNETOMETER on 14 July 2005, approach much closer to 2 (a) A schematic (with (a) the surface in order to investigate. This was Saturn and Enceladus agreed by the project team and Cassini’s not shown to scale) third fly-by reached an altitude of 173 km. showing the corotat- This time, multiple Cassini instruments ing Saturn magnetic obtained definitive evidence for active ejec- field and plasma being tion of water vapour and ice particles from draped ahead of the south pole of Enceladus. Enceladus by a diffuse, The resulting magnetic field observa- extended atmosphere. tions confirmed the atmospheric signature (Dougherty et al. 2006) but indicated that the “atmosphere” was (b) Revised schematic focused at the south pole, as revealed in showing the corotat- figure 2b. The various instrument data ing Saturn magnetic sets from this third fly-by revealed a moon field and plasma being with internal heat leaking out of cracks at perturbed by the polar the south pole, and a water-vapour plume plume of water vapour filled with dust and organic material rising generated at the south hundreds of kilometres above the surface pole of Enceladus. (b) (figure 1, see Dougherty et al. 2017). (Dougherty et al. 2006) Based on this plume discovery, the Cas- sini extended missions were designed to 3 Twelve days of Cas- further investigate Enceladus, which is now sini magnetospheric regarded as one of the prime potentially data during Rev. 17 in habitable locations within our solar system. 2005, with multiple magnetopause bound- Planetary period oscillations ary crossings inbound The phenomenon of planetary period at mid-morning on oscillations (PPOs) appears to be unique days 298 and 299, to Saturn’s magnetosphere. In the PPOs, periapsis near dusk at all the magnetospheric field and plasma the end of day 302, parameters oscillate at near the planetary and an outbound rotation period, despite the planetary magneto pause cross- magnetic field being, as far as we know, ing pre-dawn on day perfectly symmetrical about the planet’s 307. The top panel spin axis. The plasma parameters oscillate shows a radio wave (3) at the planetary rotation period in Jupi- power spectrogram ter’s magnetosphere, but that is because from 5 kHz to 2 MHz, Jupiter’s magnetic dipole is tilted by ~10° to the second panel a its rotation axis, so that both the field and thermal electron flux the embedded plasma “rock” up and down spectrogram from at the rotation period as the planet spins. ~0.5 eV to ~30 keV, and Cassini MAG data have shown, however, the four lower panels that the tilt of Saturn’s planetary magnetic show the three compo- dipole is less than ~0.1° (Burton 2010). nents and magnitude The existence of PPOs at Saturn was first of the magnetic field. detected in power modulations of plan- The components are etary radio emissions observed by the two spherical polar, refer- Voyager spacecraft in 1980. These radio enced to the northern modulations were interpreted as revealing spin/magnetic axis of the deep rotation period of the planet via the planet, and have some rotating magnetic anomaly – similar, the internal field of the in principle, to what happens at Jupiter. The planet subtracted. The period thus determined, ~10.656 h, remains data at the bottom as the IAU System III period (Desch & give the day number Kaiser 1981), in the absence of a more defini- and spacecraft position tive value. Oscillations near a ~10 h period – local time (hours), were also observed in the energetic particle co-latitude and radial and magnetic data from the Pioneer 11 distance (in Saturn and Voyager fly-bys (Carbary & Krimigis radii, RS = 60 268 km). 1982, Espinosa & Dougherty 2000), but they PPO-related ~10 h proved not to be consistent with a rotat- modulations are evi- ing magnetic anomaly within the planet dent in all parameters, (Espinosa 2003). Remote radio observations and inbound magneto- by the Ulysses spacecraft, over ~10 years pause location. (Modi- starting in 1993, showed that the radio fied from Gérard et al. modulation period varies slowly with time, 2006) DownloadedA& Gfrom • August https://academic.oup.com/astrogeo/article-abstract/58/4/4.36/3988906 2017 • Vol.
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