Physics
Scientific paper
Nov 1985
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1985esabu..44...32w&link_type=abstract
ESA Bulletin (ISSN 0376-4265), no. 44, Nov. 1985, p. 32-39.
Physics
Flyby Missions, Giacobini-Zinner Comet, International Sun Earth Explorer 3, Spaceborne Experiments, Comet Nuclei, Comet Tails, Mass Spectroscopy, Payloads, Plasma Diagnostics
Scientific paper
The first satellite investigation of the interaction between the solar wind and the cometary atmosphere, the International Cometary Explorer (ICE), the former ISEE-3, probing in 1985 the Comet Giacobini-Zinner, is described. The two-year 70-million-km journey brought ICE undamaged through the plasma tail, 8000 km to the antisunward side of the nucleus at a relative velocity of 21 km/s. ICE confirmed the accepted cometary tail model (a cold tail of ions creating a hairpin-shaped magnetic field of two lobes of opposite polarity separated by a neutral sheet, surrounded by an interaction region, and finally a bow shock) and provided the first direct observation of the current sheet and the bow shock. Initial findings reveal an uncharacteristic bow shock with a total width of 250,000 km, an unusually turbulent interaction region, and a plasma tail of low energy, high density (600 electrons/cu cm), and low temperature (20,000 K), 100 times denser and 10 times colder than the ambient solar wind, with a total width of 25,000 km.
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