Plasma Sources of Solar System Magnetospheres

Professor Andrew F. Nagy received a Diploma in Radio Engineering and an Honors B. E. degree from the University of New South Wales. He completed his graduate education in the U.S., receiving M.S. degrees from the University of Nebraska and the University of Michigan and a Ph. D. from the University of Michigan. He has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan from 1963 to 2012 and is now Professor Emeritus. He has had short term appointments at UCSD, Utah State University and Stanford University. Professor Nagy has over forty years of experience in both theoretical and experimental studies of the upper atmospheres, ionospheres and magnetospheres of the Earth and planets. He was principal and co-investigator of a variety of instruments flown on OGO, Pioneer Venus, Dynamic Explorer etc. He was Interdisciplinary Scientist for the Dynamic Explorer and Pioneer Venus programs. He has also participated, both as an instrument and science collaborator, on the Soviet VEGA and PHOBOS  missions. He is a team member of the Radio Science Investigation on Cassini, and was co-investigator on the Nozomi mission. He has led the development of numerous theoretical models related to planetary atmospheric and ionospheric studies and has been involved in a large variety of data analysis and interpretation studies. He has been the principal or co-author of over 350 papers published in refereed journals; he has also authored/co-authored a number of review papers and encyclopedia chapters and a book on the ionospheres. Professor Nagy has been the chair or member of a large number of Committees and Boards of NASA, NSF, NAS/NRC, AGU, COSPAR, URSI etc. He has also served as Editor of Geophysical Research Letters and Reviews of Geophysics and Space Physics. He was also the President of the Space Physics and Aeronomy Section of AGU. Professor Nagy is a Fellow of the AGU. He is also a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the International Academy of Astronautics. He wonthe AGU J. A. Fleming Medal and the William Kaula Award, was the Nicolet Lecturer at AGU and was a winner of the NASA Public Service Medal.

Dr. Michel Blanc graduated from Ecole Polytechnique (1970) and Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (1973), and defended his doctoralthesis in 1980 at Université Paris VI. He started his career in the field ofionospheric research and space physics at the Centre de Recherches en Physiquede l'Environnement. In 1988 he was appointed director of the Midi-PyrénéesObservatory in Toulouse. There he has been actively involved in the preparationof several major space programmes, first ESA's CLUSTER mission, then on theexploration of giant planets: first the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn andTitan, for which he has been appointed by NASA Interdisciplinary Scientist, andlater the EJSM/Laplace joint ESA-NASA mission to the Jupiter system, for whichhe served as ESA's lead scientist. From July 2000 to June 2005, he has beendirector of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence. From august2007 to February 2012 he has been Vice-president for research of EcolePolytechnique. Dr. Blanc has been a member of the SSWG of ESA and has chairedfor nearly 10 years the Solar system working group of CNES. He has been thechairman of the CERES, the Space Science Committee of CNES, which covers alldisciplines from fundamental physics to astrobiology, and a member of theComité des Programmes Scientifiques (CPS) of CNES. From 2005 to 2012, Dr. Blanchas been the coordinator of the EuroPlanet EU network, a researchinfrastructure network gathering over 60 planetary science laboratories in 17EU countries. He is now back at the Observatoire Mid-Pyrénées (IRAP laboratory)in Toulouse where he is working on giant planets magnetospheres, particularly through his involvements in the Cassini and Juno missions, and also serves as Discipline Scientist (in particular for planetary sciences) at ISSI.

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This volume reviews what we know of the corresponding plasma source for each intrinsically magnetized planet. Plasma sources fall essentially in three categories: the solar wind, the ionosphere (both prevalent on Earth), and the satellite-related sources. 

Throughout the text, the case of each planet is described, including the characteristics, chemical composition and intensity of each source. The authors also describe how the plasma generated at the source regions is transported to populate the magnetosphere, and how it is later lost. To summarize, the dominant sources are found to be the solar wind and sputtered surface ions at Mercury, the solar wind and ionosphere at Earth (the relative importance of the two being discussed in a specific introductory chapter), Io at Jupiter and - a big surprise of the Cassini findings - Enceladus at Saturn. The situation for Uranus and Neptune, which were investigated by only one fly-by each, is still open and requires further studies and exploration. In thefinal chapter, the book offers a summary of the little we know of Uranus andNeptune, then summarizes in a comparative way what we know of plasma sourcesthroughout the solar system, and proposes directions for future research.