Space Physics
The Kelvin-Helmholtz instability is a ubiquitous physical process in ordinary fluids and plasmas, frequently observed also in space environments. In this paper, kinetic effects at proton scales in the nonlinear and turbulent stage of the…
Collision avoidance is a topic of growing importance for any satellite orbiting Earth. Especially those satellites without thrusting capabilities face the problem of not being able to perform impulsive collision avoidance manoeuvres. For…
Interplanetary shocks are one of the crucial dynamic processes in the Heliosphere. They accelerate particles into a high energy, generate plasma waves, and could potentially trigger geomagnetic storms in the terrestrial magnetosphere…
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracking of the SpaceX Starlink satellite launch on February 03, 2022 is reviewed. Of the 49 Starlink satellites released into orbit, 38 were eventually lost. Thirty-two of the satellites…
Gas pipelines, transmission lines, overhead wires, transformers, GNSS navigation, and telecommunication systems are part of critical infrastructure. Industry, transportation, service operations, farming, and everyday life highly depend on…
We present simulation results of a gradual solar energetic particle (SEP) event detected on 2021 October 9 by multiple spacecraft, including BepiColombo (Bepi) and near-Earth spacecraft such as the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). A…
Tianwen-1 spacecraft (Wan et al. 2020) is China's first Mars exploration mission. The Mars Orbiter Magnetometer (MOMAG) is a scientific instrument aboard the Tianwen-1 mission that is designed to study magnetic fields at Mars, including the…
To address the lack of user-friendly software needed to simplify the utilization of model data across Heliophysics, the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a model-agnostic method…
The ever increasing dependence of modern societies in space based services results in a rising number of objects in orbit which grows the probability of collisions between them. The increase in space debris is a threat to space assets,…
Aerodynamic collision avoidance manoeuvres provide an opportunity for satellites in Low Earth Orbits to reduce the risk during close encounters. With rising numbers of satellites and objects in orbit, satellites experience close encounters…
The Cassini spacecraft's Grand Finale flybys through Saturn's ionosphere provided unprecedented insight into the composition and dynamics of the gas giant's upper atmosphere and a novel and complex spacecraft-plasma interaction. In this…
Mercury is the archetype of a weakly magnetized, airless, telluric body immersed in the solar wind. Due to the lack of any substantial atmosphere, the solar wind directly precipitates on Mercury's surface. Using a 3D fully-kinetic…
Collisionless shocks play a key role in the heliosphere at planetary bow shocks by governing the conversion of the upstream bulk kinetic energy of the solar wind flow to other forms of energy in the downstream, including bulk plasma heat,…
The ultraviolet imager (UVI) of the Polar spacecraft and an all-sky camera at Longyearbyen contemporaneously detected an auroral vortex structure (so-called "auroral spiral") on 10 January 1997. From space, the auroral spiral was observed…
The dissipation of magnetized turbulence is fundamental to understanding energy transfer and heating in astrophysical systems. Collisionless interactions, such as resonant wave-particle process, are known to play a role in shaping turbulent…
Angular scattering in charge exchange and elastic collisions between interstellar ions and neutral (ISN) atoms has been assumed to be negligible in previous studies. Here, we investigated the momentum transfer associated with the angular…
The Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) images the heliosphere by observing energetic neutral atoms (ENAs). The IBEX-Hi instrument onboard IBEX provides full-sky maps of ENA fluxes produced in the heliosphere and very local interstellar…
The geospace environment is volatile and highly driven. Space weather has effects on Earth's magnetosphere that cause a dynamic and enigmatic response in the thermosphere, particularly on the evolution of neutral mass density. Many models…
Space weather indices are used commonly to drive forecasts of thermosphere density, which directly affects objects in low-Earth orbit (LEO) through atmospheric drag. One of the most commonly used space weather proxies, $F_{10.7 cm}$,…
The accurate prediction of aerodynamic drag on satellites orbiting in the upper atmosphere is critical to the operational success of modern space technologies, such as satellite-based communication or navigation systems, which have become…