Speaker
Description
The Rosetta mission followed comet 67P over heliospheric distances ranging from 1.25 to 3.6 AU. A come tis essentially a gas cloud embedded in the solar wind. When gas molecules are ionized they are picked up by the solar wind stream, the solar wind is “mass loaded”. The initial reaction of the solar wind to mass loading is to be deflected in the direction opposite to the solar wind electric field. During the two year mission several coronal mass ejections (CME) and coronating interaction regions (CIR) affected the comet environment. We have looked through the data from the Rosetta Plasma Consortium for the most extreme space weather events including all identified CIR:s and CME:s. We have re-analysed the data in terms of the observed solar wind flow direction in the comet - solar wind - electric field reference system. We find that the solar wind events are significantly affected by the comet environment. Solar wind flow directions for the extreme events often deviate from the expected deflection of the flow in the direction opposite to the solar wind electric field direction. We present our current understanding of how a disturbed solar wind reacts to the comet environment. This provides a general picture of how space weather events evolve in the presence of a back ground neutral gas providing mass loading of the solar wind.
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