Imaging the Earth's environment via ENA: Space Weather applications

by Dr Elisabetta De Angelis (INAF), Dr Stefano Orsini (INAF)

Tuesday 18 Jun 2019, 11:00 → 13:00 Europe/Rome

The detection of directional Energetic Neutral Atoms (ENA) is a well-established method to provide information about Solar wind interaction with planetary environments.

The ring current carried by charged particles trapped in the Earth's magnetosphere is responsible for shielding the lower latitudes from magnetospheric electric fields. Remote sensing of ENA in the Earth environment provides detailed information on the ring current plasma population at energies below 100 keV.

The Space WEATher Ena Radiation Sensor (SWEATERS) project consists in the development of new generation ENA imagers to be installed on a cluster of platforms orbiting at low altitude around the Earth. SWEATERS instruments will point to the zenith with an extended field-of-view in the polar direction, thus imaging almost the whole sky in one orbit and allowing for continuous monitoring of the spatially distributed ring current plasma population.