Solar wind and Sun-Planet connections

The solar wind is a continuous supersonic outflow of plasma from the Sun that fills the space between the planets. The solar wind is turbulent, and collisions between solar-wind particles are very rare. This leads to many effects that are counter-intuitive to our everyday experience with neutral gases like the air. Although we know that the solar wind is launched in the solar corona, the acceleration mechanisms, the heating of the solar wind, the role of non-equilibrium physics, as well as the effects of waves and turbulence are still areas of very active research. 

Members of the Space Plasma Physics group at MSSL work on answering these questions using spacecraft measurements of the particles and the electromagnetic fields in the solar wind as well as plasma theory and simulations. We want to understand the origin of the solar wind, its propagation through interplanetary space, and its interaction with celestial bodies. 

We are the principal investigator institute for the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) instrument suite on board the upcoming Solar Orbiter mission. This mission will launch in 2020 and investigate the connection between the Sun and the solar wind in great detail. In addition to leading the SWA consortium, we built the Electron Analyser System (EAS) for SWA at MSSL. We also use data from past and present space missions such as Helios, Cluster, Wind, and MMS to study the solar wind.

We work in close collaboration with the UCL/MSSL Solar Physics group in order to better our understanding between phenomena on the Sun and their propagation into the solar system.