University of Leicester
Browse
- No file added yet -

BepiColombo mission confirms stagnation region of Venus and reveals its large extent

Download (2.63 MB)
journal contribution
posted on 2023-07-07, 09:19 authored by M Persson, S Aizawa, N André, S Barabash, Y Saito, Y Harada, D Heyner, S Orsini, A Fedorov, C Mazelle, Y Futaana, LZ Hadid, M Volwerk, G Collinson, B Sanchez-Cano, A Barthe, E Penou, S Yokota, V Génot, JA Sauvaud, D Delcourt, M Fraenz, R Modolo, A Milillo, HU Auster, I Richter, JZD Mieth, P Louarn, CJ Owen, TS Horbury, K Asamura, S Matsuda, H Nilsson, M Wieser, T Alberti, A Varsani, V Mangano, A Mura, H Lichtenegger, G Laky, H Jeszenszky, K Masunaga, C Signoles, M Rojo, G Murakami
The second Venus flyby of the BepiColombo mission offer a unique opportunity to make a complete tour of one of the few gas-dynamics dominated interaction regions between the supersonic solar wind and a Solar System object. The spacecraft pass through the full Venusian magnetosheath following the plasma streamlines, and cross the subsolar stagnation region during very stable solar wind conditions as observed upstream by the neighboring Solar Orbiter mission. These rare multipoint synergistic observations and stable conditions experimentally confirm what was previously predicted for the barely-explored stagnation region close to solar minimum. Here, we show that this region has a large extend, up to an altitude of 1900 km, and the estimated low energy transfer near the subsolar point confirm that the atmosphere of Venus, despite being non-magnetized and less conductive due to lower ultraviolet flux at solar minimum, is capable of withstanding the solar wind under low dynamic pressure.

Funding

French co-authors acknowledge the support of Center National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES, France) to the BepiColombo and Solar Orbiter mission. BepiColombo is a joint space mission between ESA and JAXA. MPPE is funded by JAXA, CNES, the Center National de la Recherche scientifique (CNRS, France), the Italian Space Agency (ASI). SERENA management are funded by ASI, the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), and the ground-based activities by ESA (EXPRO contract). SERENA/PICAM is funded by the Austrian Space Applications Program of the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), ESA’s Program de Développement d’Expériences (PRODEX) and CNES. The Swedish Contribution to SERENA/MIPA and MPPE/ENA is funded by the Swedish National Space Agency (SNSA). Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA, operated by ESA. Solar Orbiter Wind Analyser (SWA) data are derived from scientific sensors which have been designed and created, and operated, under funding provided in numerous contracts from the UK Space Agency (UKSA), the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), ASI, CNES, CNRS, the Czech contribution to the ESA PRODEX program, and NASA. Solar orbiter SWA work at UCL/MSSL is currently funded under STFC grants ST/T001356/1 and ST/S000240/1. Solar Orbiter magnetometer operations are funded by the UK Space Agency (grant ST/T001062/1); T.S.H. is supported by STFC grant ST/S000364/1. B.S.-C. acknowledges support through UK-STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship ST/V004115/1 and STFC grant for BepiColombo travel ST/V000209/1. DH was supported by the German Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie and the German Zentrum für Luft-und Raumfahrt under contract 50 QW1501. S.A. is funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) for the TEMPETE (Temporal Evolution of Magnetized Planetary Environments during exTreme Events) project. M.P. is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program under grant agreement No 871149

History

Citation

Persson, M., Aizawa, S., André, N. et al. BepiColombo mission confirms stagnation region of Venus and reveals its large extent. Nat Commun 13, 7743 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-35061-3

Author affiliation

School of Physics and Astronomy

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Nature Communications

Volume

13

Issue

1

Pagination

7743

Publisher

Nature Research

issn

2041-1723

eissn

2041-1723

Acceptance date

2022-11-16

Copyright date

2022

Available date

2022-12-15

Publisher DOI

Spatial coverage

England

Language

eng

Publisher version

Usage metrics

    University of Leicester Publications

    Categories

    No categories selected

    Keywords

    Planetary scienceSpace physics

    Licence

    CC BY 4.0

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC