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| Titel |
Feasibility study of in-situ measurements of Europa's neutral and plasma plumes with JUICE/PEP |
| VerfasserIn |
Hans Huybrighs, Yoshifumi Futaana, Stas Barabash, Martin Wieser, Peter Wurz, Norbert Krupp, Karl-Heinz Glassmeier, Bert Vermeersen |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
| Datensatznummer |
250132878
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2016-13425.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| We investigate the spatial distribution of the neutral and plasma particles originating from the
Europa plume [1] by simulating their trajectories in order to evaluate their in-situ detection by
the PEP (Particle Environment Package) instrument, a part of the JUICE scientific payload.
We first produced neutral test particles by assuming source characteristics (temperature
and mass flux) of the water plume. Subsequently these particles were traced under
Europa’s gravity field to obtain the density distribution of the plume gas. Then test
particles representing water molecule ions were produced by combining the neutral
density distribution and a time constant for electron impact reactions. Subsequently
the trajectories of the produced water molecule ions were traced under the Jovian
corotational electromagnetic field. Finally, from the calculated neutral density and
the plasma velocity distributions, we emulated the observations of the neutrals
and ions along the two Europa flybys planned for the JUICE mission. We did this
specifically for the PEP/NIM (Neutral gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer) and PEP/JDC
(Jovian plasma Dynamics and Composition analyser) sensor. The derived signal to
noise ratios are well above the detection limits of NIM and JDC (S/N>100 and
>10, respectively), even if we assume a rather low-mass-flux plume (∼0.7 kg/s,
which is 104 times less than what was reported in [1]). The flux is significantly
asymmetrical between the inbound and outbound trajectory, because the charged particles
are flowing downtail (leading hemisphere direction) due to the Jovian co-rotation
flow.
[1] Roth, L., J. Saur, K. D. Retherford, D. F. Strobel, P. D. Feldman, M. A. McGrath, and F.
Nimmo, Transient water vapor at europa’s south pole, Science, 343(6167), 171–174,
doi:10.1126/science.1247051, 2014. |
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