Abstract
Abstract Electrostatic analyzers of different designs have been used since the earliest days of the space age, beginning with the very earliest solar-wind measurements made by Mariner 2 en route to Venus in 1962. The Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission, NASA’s first dedicated mission to study the innermost reaches of the heliosphere, makes its thermal plasma measurements using a suite of instruments called the Solar Wind Electrons, Alphas, and Protons (SWEAP) investigation. SWEAP’s electron PSP Analyzer (Solar Probe ANalyzer-Electron (SPAN-E)) instruments are a pair of top-hat electrostatic analyzers on PSP that are capable of measuring the electron distribution function in the solar wind from 2 eV to 30 keV. For the first time, in situ measurements of thermal electrons provided by SPAN-E will help reveal the heating and acceleration mechanisms driving the evolution of the solar wind at the points of acceleration and heating, closer than ever before to the Sun. This paper details the design of the SPAN-E sensors and their operation, data formats, and measurement caveats from PSP’s first two close encounters with the Sun.
Highlights
The Solar Probe ANalyzers (SPANs)-E high-voltage power supply board generates all of the high voltages that are used in the operation of the instrument
The four sweeping supplies are each controlled by a digital to analog converter (DAC) chip, which converts the digital signal sent from the digital board into an analog output that serves as the signal into the high voltage (HV) amplifier
Operation of Solar Probe ANalyzers (SPAN-E) can be divided into two main modes based on spacecraft operations: the primary “encounter” phase of the orbits, which is approximately ten days centered around Parker Solar Probe (PSP) perihelion, and the rest of the orbit, hereafter called “cruise” phase
Summary
Parker Solar Probe (PSP) is a NASA robotic mission flying closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft. PSP uses an encounterbased operations scheme: the science instruments on the spacecraft collect their primary, high-cadence data during a solar “encounter” phase that lasts for 10–15 days (when the distance from the Sun is less than 0.25 au) around perihelion, and occasionally collect lower-cadence data during the remaining portion of the orbit, termed the “cruise” phase. To achieve the mission’s science goals, SWEAP characterizes the bulk plasma in the solar wind and corona by measuring the low-energy (
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