Multi-spacecraft analysis toolkit for Swarm

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Recent space missions such as CHAMP and Ørsted have significantly advanced our understanding of planetary magnetism. Data interpretation and global field modelling based on single-spacecraft magnetic measurements, however, are generically limited by their spatiotemporal ambiguity. The forthcoming three-spacecraft ESA mission Swarm will be able to address this problem and thus provide a better separation of internal and external contributions to the Earth’s magnetic field. To tap the full potential of Swarm’s multi-point nature and also its combination of scientific instruments, we plan to tailor a data analysis toolkit to the specifics of the mission. The project described in this proposal will build on the efforts made in the context of ESA’s multi-spacecraft mission Cluster. We will focus on the identification of auroral processes and current systems by in-situ measurements of the pair of Swarm satellites on the lower orbit of the constellation. Of particular importance in this context are field-aligned currents at high latitudes. New techniques will be developed and combined with existing methods into a unified framework to identify spatially localized and possibly also time-varying contributions to magnetic field data. The analysis tools developed in the context of our project serve a dual purpose. First, they are expected to support other groups in the SPP 1488 in their efforts to model the planetary magnetic field of internal origin. Second, they will be the basis for a longer-term study of plasma processes at the ionospheric ends of auroral flux tubes, with details to be specified in the renewal proposals of this priority program.