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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2017

The « 3-D donut » electrostatic analyzer for millisecond timescale electron measurements in the solar wind

Résumé

Understanding electron acceleration mechanisms in planetary magnetospheres or energy dissipation at electron scale in the solar wind requires fast measurement of electron distribution functions on a millisecond time scale. Still, since the beginning of space age, the instantaneous field of view of plasma spectrometers is limited to a few degrees around their viewing plane. In Earth's magnetosphere, the NASA MMS spacecraft use 8 state-of-the-art sensor heads to reach a time resolution of 30 milliseconds. This costly strategy in terms of mass and power consumption can hardly be extended to the next generation of constellation missions that would use a large number of small-satellites. In the solar wind, using the same sensor heads, the ESA THOR mission is expected to reach the 5ms timescale in the thermal energy range, up to 100eV. We present the « 3-D donut » electrostatic analyzer concept that can change the game for future space missions because of its instantaneous hemispheric field of view. A set of 2 sensors is sufficient to cover all directions over a wide range of energy, e.g. up to 1-2keV in the solar wind, which covers both thermal and supra-thermal particles. In addition, its high sensitivity compared to state of the art instruments opens the possibility of millisecond time scale measurements in space plasmas. With CNES support, we developed a high fidelity prototype (a quarter of the full « 3-D donut » analyzer) that includes all electronic sub-systems. The prototype weights less than a kilogram. The key building block of the instrument is an imaging detector that uses EASIC, a low-power front-end electronics that will fly on the ESA Solar Orbiter and on the NASA Parker Solar Probe missions.
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Dates et versions

hal-02796749 , version 1 (05-06-2020)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-02796749 , version 1

Citer

Matthieu Berthomier, Jean-Denis Techer. The « 3-D donut » electrostatic analyzer for millisecond timescale electron measurements in the solar wind. American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting, Dec 2017, New Orleans, Louisiane, United States. pp.SH44A-05. ⟨hal-02796749⟩
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