Comparative Studies of the Interaction and Ionospheric Processes at a Variety of Different "Non-Magnetic" Solar System Bodies

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This project provides continuing support to enable extension of previously funded investigation of the interaction of fast flowing plasma with non-magnetized solar system bodies. In the previous project, comprehensive numerical schemes that had been developed for terrestrial space weather applications were modified to be used for a variety of solar system applications. A significant fraction of the effort centered on the development, in a systematic fashion, of the "best possible" magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models to describe these interactions and ionospheric phenomena at Titan and Mars. The result is a high spatial resolution, multi-species, spherical, Hall, magnetohydrodynamic model that can calculate the solar wind interaction processes, escape fluxes, and associated ionospheric phenomena. The spherical model has a grid resolution of about 10 km and 35 km in the ionospheric regions of Mars and Titan, respectively, providing very good simulations of the measured densities. This project will expand the effort to include other solar system bodies in order to undertake comparative studies; of particular interest are Io, Europa, Callisto, and Enceladus. The MHD code will be modified to be multi-fluid by solving separate momentum and energy equations for the different species. The codes will be applied to investigations of the many similarities and the important differences in the chemical and physical processes associated with the different solar system bodies. The numerical schemes to be used originated in the field of computational fluid dynamics and will likely find applications outside the field of planetary and comparative aeronomy, such as global climate change modeling. The basic MHD code that is being continually improved will be useful in current space weather efforts. The project will provide partial support for a female graduate student.