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Shading under Titan's sky

Grieger, B.

During the descent of the Huygens probe in January 2005, its Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) will take the first close up images of Titan's surface. The shading imposed by the illumination of a planetary surface contains information on its topography. For planetary bodies without an optically thick atmosphere, the light can be assumed to…

Spatial structure of beamlets according to Cluster observations

Zelenyi, L. M.; Sauvaud, J. -A.; Dunlop, M. W. +4 more

Beamlets are sporadic bursty ion beams with energies about 10-30 keV observed in the lobes - plasma sheet interface. To investigate the spatial structure of this phenomenon we used Cluster data for the fall and summer of 2001 time interval. Both case study and statistical study have been performed. At a later stage of statistical study Interball d…

Special Issue: First results of the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer aboard the Mars Express mission

Sotin, Christophe; Encrenaz, Thérèse

Performance and surface scattering models for the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS)

Gurnett, D. A.; Johnson, W. T. K.; Orosei, R. +10 more

The primary scientific objective of the Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), which will be on board Mars Express mission scheduled for launch in 2003, is to map the distribution and depth of the liquid water/ice interface in the upper kilometres of the crust of Mars. MARSIS will also provide unique information to he…

Dawn: A journey in space and time

Russell, C. T.; Jaumann, R.; Keller, H. U. +18 more

By successively orbiting both 4 Vesta and 1 Ceres the Dawn mission directly addresses the long-standing goals of understanding the origin and evolution of the solar system. Ceres and Vesta are two complementary terrestrial protoplanets (one apparently ;wet; and the other ;dry;), whose accretion was probably terminated by the formation of Jupiter. …

Ion loss on Mars caused by the Kelvin Helmholtz instability

Kallio, E.; Barabash, S.; Gunell, H. +8 more

Mars Global Surveyor detected cold electrons above the Martian ionopause, which can be interpreted as detached ionospheric plasma clouds. Similar observations by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter electron temperature probe showed also extreme spatial irregularities of electrons in the form of plasma clouds on Venus, which were explained by the occurrence …

Recent advances in the long-wavelength radio physics of the Sun

Gopalswamy, N.

Solar radio bursts at long wavelengths provide information on solar disturbances such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and shocks at the moment of their departure from the Sun. The radio bursts also provide information on the physical properties (density, temperature and magnetic field) of the medium that supports the propagation of the disturbanc…

CASSINI/VIMS-V at Jupiter: Radiometric calibration test and data results

Brown, R. H.; Gondet, B.; Langevin, Y. +5 more

During the Cassini-Huygens flyby of Jupiter in December 2000, VIMS-V acquired multispectral data cubes of Jupiter's atmosphere. The visual and infrared imaging spectrometer-visual channel (VIMS-V) is one of the principal contributions of Italian Space Agency (ASI) to the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. VIMS-V is an imaging spectrometer operatin…

Influence of wall impacts on the Ulysses dust detector on understanding the interstellar dust flux

Krüger, H.; Grün, E.; Altobelli, N. +2 more

The Ulysses spacecraft orbits the Sun on a highly inclined orbit, and the impact ionization dust detector on board continuously measures interstellar dust grains with masses up to 10^-13kg, penetrating deep into the Solar System. The flow direction is close to the mean apex of the Sun's motion through the local interstellar cloud (LIC), …

Evolution of the Martian atmosphere and hydrosphere: Solar wind erosion studied by ASPERA-3 on Mars Express

Lundin, Rickard; Barabash, Stanislav

The evolution of the Martian atmosphere and the potential existence of a past hydrosphere is a scientific issue of great interest in planetary research. Although the first missions to Mars had a focus on surface features and atmospheric properties, some of the missions (e.g., The Soviet Mars 2, 3 and 5) also carried instruments addressing the sola…