Properties of the Thermal Ion Plasma Near Rhea as Measured by the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer

Details Properties of the Thermal Ion Plasma Near Rhea as Measured by the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer Properties of the Thermal Ion Plasma Near Rhea as Measured by the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer

Dec 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009agufm.p51c1147w&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2009, abstract #P51C-1147

Physics

[2732] Magnetospheric Physics / Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, [2756] Magnetospheric Physics / Planetary Magnetospheres, [5737] Planetary Sciences: Fluid Planets / Magnetospheres, [6280] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

Rhea is the second largest Saturnian satellite orbiting at 8.74 Saturn radii, within the magnetosphere’s near co-rotating thermal plasma. Rhea’s orbital speed is less than the co-rotation speed, so the thermal plasma forms a wake in the direction of Rhea’s orbital motion. During November 26, 2005, Cassini passed within 500 km of Rhea and through this wake, with a subsequent fly-by an order of magnitude higher on August 30, 2007. The thermal plasma moments during these encounters are investigated here utilizing the Ion Mass Spectrometer sensor of Cassini and analyzed by a forward model technique. Due to the brevity of fly-bys, IMS is only able to sample a single slice of phase space at high time resolution throughout, rather than actuating to allow sampling of a variety of pitch angles but only providing a few data points. Even with this restriction the moments before/after the encounter are in good agreement with other non-fly-by actuating calculated moments. It is found that the plasma is dominated by water ions, with plasma velocities ≈ 30% slower than would be expected by rigid co-rotation and local plasma densities decrease when passing through the wake. During the encounters the results show that on the Saturn side of Rhea there is no radial component of plasma flow, yet there is a radial component of ≈ 10 km/s outward on the anti-Saturn side.

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