Magnetosphere-Ionosphere Coupling at the Outer Planets

自2016年以来，在太空历史上首次同时在木星（美国宇航局朱诺号）和土星（美国宇航局-欧洲航天局卡西尼号）上执行了两项外行星任务。卡西尼号的任务结束顺序发生在2017年9月15日，在大结局轨道之后，飞船在环系统的内缘和土星本身之间坠落。从数据收集的角度来看，这个戏剧性的任务结束序列将我们带入了土星系统中完全未被探索的区域，我们从任务的最后一集收集了许多新数据。这增加了之前12年在土星的连续运行，产生了一个13年的数据集，尚未得到充分的科学利用。朱诺号于2016年7月进入木星轨道。该航天器目前在53天的轨道上，探索木星磁层的极地地区，从船上的各种仪器提供前所未有的数据。每次近日点（每53天一次）都提供了大量关于磁层和电离层之间耦合的新信息，以及地球在高层大气中极光发射的动力学。这两项任务都得到了莱斯特大学领导的哈勃太空望远镜项目的支持，该项目旨在研究紫外线极光，以补充和扩展两艘航天器在木星和土星轨道上进行的紫外/红外观测。我们是唯一一家参与朱诺任务的英国集团（作为科学CoIs），并且在专有期间可以访问数据，例如，我们可以完全访问来自JEDI仪器的高能粒子数据。我们从一开始就参与了卡西尼号任务，并且是磁力计团队的coi，因此在处理这个数据集和其他数据集（例如等离子体，无线电和等离子体波，紫外线/红外）方面有丰富的经验。在这个博士项目中，将有空间研究卡西尼号任务数据和/或朱诺号任务数据。该学生将研究任一行星上太阳风-磁层-电离层耦合的各个方面，包括对原位航天器数据集和哈勃太空望远镜遥感数据的数据分析。

Since 2016, for the first time in space history, there have been two outer planet missions operating at Jupiter (NASA Juno) and Saturn (NASA-ESA Cassini) simultaneously. The end-of-Cassini mission sequence took place on Sept 15th 2017, after the Grand Finale orbits where the spacecraft plummeted between the inner edge of the ring system and Saturn itself. From a data gathering perspective, this dramatic end of mission sequence has taken us into completely unexplored regions of the Saturn system, and we have gathered much new data from this final episode of the mission. This adds to the previous 12 years of continuous operations at Saturn, yielding a 13 year dataset which is yet to be fully exploited scientifically.The Juno mission entered orbit at Jupiter in July 2016. The spacecraft is now in a 53 day orbit, exploring the polar regions of Jupiter's magnetosphere, providing unprecedented data from the various instruments on board. Each periapsis pass (every 53 days) provides a wealth of new information on the coupling between the magnetosphere and the ionosphere, and the dynamics of the planet's auroral emissions in the upper atmosphere.Both missions have been supported by Leicester-led Hubble Space Telescope campaigns to study the ultra-violet auroras to complement and extend the UV/IR observations taken by both spacecraft from Jupiter and Saturn orbit.We are the only UK group involved in the Juno mission (as Science CoIs) and have access to data during the proprietary period, e.g. we have full access to the energetic particle data from the JEDI instrument.We have been involved in the Cassini mission since the beginning, and are CoIs on the magnetometer team and thus have a great deal of experience of working with this data set and others (e.g. plasma, radio and plasma waves, UV/IR).In this PhD project, there will be scope to work on either the Cassini mission data and/or the Juno mission data. The student will be studying aspects of solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere coupling at either/both planet, including data analysis of in situ spacecraft datasets and remote sensing data from the Hubble Space Telescope.