# Dust, Field and Plasma instrument onboard ESA's Comet Interceptor mission

Hanna Rothkaehl, Nicolas Andre, Uli Auster, Vincenzo Della Corte, Niklas Edberg, Marina Galand, Pierre Henri, Johan de Keyser, Ivana Kolmasova, Marek Morawski, et al.

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To cite this version:

Hanna Rothkaehl, Nicolas Andre, Uli Auster, Vincenzo Della Corte, Niklas Edberg, et al., Dust, Field and Plasma instrument onboard ESA's Comet Interceptor mission. Europlanet Science Congress 2021, Sep 2021, Virtual Meeting, France. [hal-03536600](https://hal.science/hal-03536600)

HAL Id: hal-03536600

https://hal.science/hal-03536600

Submitted on 20 Jan 2022

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# Dust, Field and Plasma instrument onboard ESA's Comet Interceptor mission

**Hanna Rothkaehl**<fnref n="1" />, **Nicolas Andre**<fnref n="2" />, **Uli Auster**<fnref n="3" />, **vincenzo Della Corte**<fnref n="4" />, **Niklas Edberg**<fnref n="5" />, **Marina Galand**<fnref n="6" />, **Pierre Henri**<fnref n="7" />, **Johan De Keyser**<fnref n="8" />, **Ivana Kolmasova**<fnref n="9" />, **Marek Morawski**<fnref n="10" />, **Hans Nilsson**<fnref n="11" />, **Lubomir Prech**<fnref n="12" />, **Martin Volwerk**<fnref n="13" />, **Charlotte Goetz**<fnref n="14" />, **Herbert Gunell**<fnref n="15" />, **Benoit Lavraud**<fnref n="16" />, **Alessandra Rotundi**<fnref n="17" />, and **Jan Soucek**<fnref n="18" />

The main goal of ESA's F-1 class Comet Interceptor mission is to characterise, for the first time, a long period comet; preferably a dynamically-new or an interstellar object. The main spacecraft, will have its trajectory outside of the inner coma, whereas two sub-spacecrafts will be targeted inside the inner coma, closer to the nucleus. The flyby of such a comet will offer unique multipoint measurement opportunity to study the comet's dusty and ionised environment in ways exceeding that of the previous cometary missions, including Rosetta.

The Dust Field and Plasma (DFP) instruments located on both the main spacecraft A and on the sub-spacecraft B2, is a combined experiment dedicated to the in situ, multi-point study of the multi-phased ionized and dusty environment in the coma of the target and its interaction with the surrounding space environment and the Sun.

The DFP instruments will be present in different configurations on the Comet Interceptor spacecraft A and B2. To enable the measurements on spacecraft A, the DFP is composed of 5 sensors; Fluxgate magnetometer DFP-FGM-A, Plasma instrument with nanodust and E-field measurements capabilities

<footnote n="1">¹Space Research Centre Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland (hrot@cbk.waw.pl)</footnote>

<footnote n="2">²RAP/CNRS, PEPS, Toulouse, France</footnote>

<footnote n="3">³IGeP TUB, Germany</footnote>

<footnote n="4">⁴INAF-IAPS, Italy</footnote>

<footnote n="5">⁵Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala</footnote>

<footnote n="6">⁶Department of Physics, Imperial College London, UK</footnote>

<footnote n="7">⁷Lagrange, OCA, UCA, CNRS, Nice, France and (ii) LPC2E, CNRS, Orléans, France</footnote>

<footnote n="8">⁸BIRA, Belgium</footnote>

<footnote n="9">⁹IAP, Czech Republic</footnote>

<footnote n="10">¹⁰Centrum Badań Kosmicznych PAN Warszawa, Poland</footnote>

<footnote n="11">¹¹Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden</footnote>

<footnote n="12">¹²Charles University, Czech Republic</footnote>

<footnote n="13">¹³IWF/ÖAW, Austria</footnote>

<footnote n="14">¹⁴ESTEC, European Space Agency</footnote>

<footnote n="15">¹⁵Department of Physics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden</footnote>

<footnote n="16">¹⁶Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Bordeaux, Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, Pessac, France</footnote>

<footnote n="17">¹⁷Univ Parthenope di Napoli</footnote>

<footnote n="18">¹⁸IAP, Czech Republic</footnote>
DFP-COMPLIMENT, Electron spectrometer DFP-LEES, Ion and energetic neutrals spectrometer DFP-SCIENA and Dust detector DFP-DISC. On board of spacecraft B2 the DFP is composed of 2 sensors: Fluxgate magnetometer DFP-FGM-B2 and Cometary dust detector DFP-DISC.

The DFP instrument will measure magnetic field, the electric field, plasma parameters (density, temperature, speed), the distribution functions of electrons, ions and energetic neutrals, spacecraft potential, mass, number and spatial density of cometary dust particles and the dust impacts.

The full set of DFP sensors will allow to model the comet plasma environment and its interaction with the solar wind. It will also allow to describe the complex physical processes including wave particle interaction in dusty cometary plasma.