Other
Scientific paper
Dec 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002agufm.p52c..03c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2002, abstract #P52C-03
Other
2732 Magnetosphere Interactions With Satellites And Rings, 5421 Interactions With Particles And Fields, 6025 Interactions With Solar Wind Plasma And Fields, 6213 Dust, 6285 Stellar Planetary Systems
Scientific paper
There are dozens of icy satellites orbiting the giant planets and trillions of icy comets populating the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Such objects are likely to be common throughout other planetary systems, particularly those now known to have giant plants. Interactions of the local space environment with these bodies must be taken in account for proper interpretation of photometric and spectroscopic measurements related to surface composition. Most of these bodies either are known to have, or likely have, tenuous atmospheres of volatile gases produced by internal outgassing and surface sublimation, sputtering from charged particle and UV irradiation, and diffuse dust clouds produced from meteoritic impacts. Whether or not Pluto counts as a small icy planet or a big comet, its thin and variable atmosphere also allows direct surface exposure to the space environment. Even glacial ices on the surface of (e.g., Snowball) Earth may have been exposed to much of the interplanetary solar UV flux at early times when an effective ozone shield was absent, and the Mars atmosphere is thin enough today for direct irradiation of polar cap ices by high energy cosmic ray and solar flare ions. Planetary magnetic fields reduce exposure to interplanetary charged particles but add irradiation by magnetospheric plasma and energetic particles. At Europa the intense surface irradiation from the Jovian magnetosphere might play a role via radiolytic chemistry in possible evolution of life within the putative sub-surface ocean. Although an armada of spacecraft have been measuring for many years the parameters of the solar UV, plasma, energetic particle, and dust environments of rocky bodies, large and small, in the inner solar system near Earth's orbit around the Sun, only six spacecraft with varying capabilities (Pioneer 10/11, Voyager 1/2, Galileo Orbiter, Cassini Orbiter) have yet ventured into the domain of the icy bodies near and beyond the orbit of Jupiter. The first five have collectively provided extensive measurements on the high flux plasma and energetic particle radiation environments of the jovian and saturnian magnetospheres, and the sixth will arrive to begin a long orbital tour of the Saturn system in July 2004. For the Uranus and Neptune systems we have the Voyager 2 flyby data sets. Extensive interplanetary measurements beyond Jupiter's orbit have only been provided by the Pioneer and Voyager missions into the 30 - 60 AU region of observable Kuiper Belt Objects (KBO). Of particular note are the recent report of dust in the outer solar system from interstellar grain impacts on KBOs, which may be relevant to observed color diversity of these objects, and the likely emergence of the Voyager 1 spacecraft into the heliosheath region of the heliosphere within the next eleven-year solar cycle if not in the next few years. The solar wind termination shock now sought by Voyager 1 marks the inner boundary of the heliosheath where outward solar wind flow slows down. The heliopause at a few times that shock distance in AU is the outer contact boundary for entry into the local interstellar plasma and cosmic ray environment of the outer Kuiper Belt at about 100 - 1000 AU and the Oort Cloud extending out to 100,000 AU. Interestingly, an increasing number of Scattered Kuiper Belt Objects in highly eccentric solar orbits are being detected near their perihelia with aphelia ranging out to 1000 AU, and these objects cumulatively experience different effects of space weathering in multiple heliospheric regions. The planned New Horizons and Interstellar Probe missions will further extend environmental measurements into the varying environmental domains of Pluto and the KBOs.
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