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SPRG Seminars - Archive
February 28, 2006:
Outer magnetospheric boundaries: Cluster results - the foreshock
Jonathan Eastwood, UC Berkeley, Space Sciences Laboratory
We will discuss the contribution that Cluster has made to studies of the dayside magnetosphere, and the recently published ISSI book (also volume 118 of Space Science Reviews) (Outer magnetospheric boundaries: Cluster results). This volume describes Cluster studies of the solar wind, bow shock, magnetosheath, magnetopause and cusps, and the ways in which multi-spacecraft techniques have been used to address the various different plasma physics problems that Cluster faced.
In particular, we will describe in detail Cluster studies of the foreshock; the region of turbulent plasma that sits upstream of the quasi-parallel shock. We will examine some of the questions that existed at the start of the Cluster mission and the way in which multi-spacecraft techniques have been used to answer them.
Cluster has been approved to continue its mission until 2009; we will describe the separation and orbit strategy in this final mission phase. We will also discuss some current problems, and show how new missions, particularly THEMIS, are potentially well placed to answer them.