A new study led by Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Michael Starkey has provided observational evidence from the SwRI-led Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ions (PUIs) and associated wave activity in the near-Earth solar wind environment.
A new study led by Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. Michael Starkey has provided observational evidence from the SwRI-led Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission of pickup ions (PUIs) and associated wave activity in the near-Earth solar wind environment. The MMS mission, launched by NASA in 2015, placed four spacecraft in orbit to observe Earth’s magnetosphere, a magnetic field around the planet that shields it from harmful solar and cosmic radiation.
PUIs are formed when neutral particles flowing through the heliosphere are ionized in the solar wind. These PUIs are dragged along with the solar wind and gyrate around the local magnetic field, forming a distinct plasma population with different characteristics from the typical solar wind population.
The PUIs were observed to have a typical velocity distribution absent of any other significant energetic ion or electron populations. The wave activity was identified using magnetic field data from MMS combined with theoretical analysis of the expected wave growth modes based on models of the observed PUIs.
Read More: Southwest Research Institute
