The Plasma Environment of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko Throughout the Rosetta Main Mission |
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| Authors: | K. C. Hansen T. Bagdonat U. Motschmann C. Alexander M. R. Combi T. E. Cravens T. I. Gombosi Y.-D. Jia I. P. Robertson |
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| Affiliation: | (1) Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109, USA;(2) Institute for Theoretical Physics, Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany;(3) Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 91109, USA;(4) Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045, USA |
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| Abstract: | ![]()
The plasma environment of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Rosetta mission target comet, is explored over a range of heliocentric distances throughout the mission: 3.25 AU (Rosetta instruments on), 2.7 AU (Lander down), 2.0 AU, and 1.3 AU (perihelion). Because of the large range of gas production rates, we have used both a fluid-based magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) model as well as a semi-kinetic hybrid particle model to study the plasma distribution. We describe the variation in plasma environs over the mission as well as the differences between the two modeling approaches under different conditions. In addition, we present results from a field aligned, two-stream transport electron model of the suprathermal electron flux when the comet is near perihelion. |
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| Keywords: | comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko plasma hybrid simulation MHD simulation |
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