Coordination of the in situ payload of Solar Orbiter

¹ European Space Agency, ESAC, Camino Bajo Del Castillo, s/n, 28692 Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain
e-mail: andrew.walsh@esa.int
² Department of Physics, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
³ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Meudon, France
⁴ Department of Space and Climate Physics, University College London, Mullard Space Science Laboratory, Holmbury St., Mary RH5 6NT, UK
⁵ Universidad de Alcalá, Space Research Group, 28805 Alcalá de Henares, Spain
⁶ Institut für Experimentelle und Angewandte Physik, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Kiel, Germany
⁷ IAPS-INAF, via Fosso del Cavaliere 100, 00133 Roma, Italy
⁸ LPP, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Sorbonne Université, Observatoire de Paris, Université Paris-Saclay, PSL Research University, Palaiseau, Paris, France
⁹ NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
¹⁰ Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA
¹¹ University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, 5210 Windisch, Switzerland
¹² Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA
¹³ Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX, USA
¹⁴ IRAP, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, CNES, UPS, Toulouse, France
¹⁵ European Space Agency, ESTEC, Keplerlaan 1, 2201 AZ Noordwijk, The Netherlands
¹⁶ Institute of Atmospheric Physics, CAS, Prague, Czechia
¹⁷ Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
¹⁸ Space Science Center, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, 03824 USA

Received: 11 October 2019
Accepted: 8 December 2019

Abstract

Solar Orbiter’s in situ coordination working group met frequently during the development of the mission with the goal of ensuring that its in situ payload has the necessary level of coordination to maximise science return. Here we present the results of that work, namely how the design of each of the in situ instruments (EPD, MAG, RPW, SWA) was guided by the need for coordination, the importance of time synchronisation, and how science operations will be conducted in a coordinated way. We discuss the mechanisms by which instrument sampling schemes are aligned such that complementary measurements will be made simultaneously by different instruments, and how burst modes are scheduled to allow a maximum overlap of burst intervals between the four instruments (telemetry constraints mean different instruments can spend different amounts of time in burst mode). We also explain how onboard autonomy, inter-instrument communication, and selective data downlink will be used to maximise the number of transient events that will be studied using high-resolution modes of all the instruments. Finally, we briefly address coordination between Solar Orbiter’s in situ payload and other missions.