Rosetta finds bubble ‘free of magnetic field’ at Comet 67P
The spacecraft has revealed a surprisingly large region around its host comet devoid of any magnetic field.
An artist’s impression of the magnetic field-free cavity at Comet 67P. Image Credit: ESA
The European Space Agency (ESA)’s Rosetta spacecraft has revealed a surprisingly large region around its host comet devoid of any magnetic field.
When ESA’s Giotto flew past Comet Halley three decades ago, it found a vast magnetic-free region extending more than 4000 kilometres (2485 miles) from the nucleus. This was the first observation of something that scientists had until then only thought about but had never seen.
Interplanetary space is pervaded by the solar wind, a flow of electrically charged particles streaming from the Sun and carrying its magnetic field across the Solar System. But a comet pouring lots of gas into space obstructs the solar wind.
At the interface between the solar wind and the coma of gas around the active comet, particle collisions as well as sunlight can knock out electrons from the molecules in the coma, which are ionised and picked up by the solar wind. This process slows the solar wind, diverting its flow around the comet and preventing it from directly impacting the nucleus.
Along with the solar wind, its magnetic field is unable to penetrate the environment around the comet, creating a region devoid of magnetic field called a diamagnetic cavity.
The Rosetta spacecraft arrived at Comet 67P in August 2014. Image Credit: ESA
Prior to Rosetta arriving at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, scientists had hoped to observe such a magnetic field-free region in the environment of this comet. The spacecraft carries a magnetometer as part of the Rosetta Plasma Consortium suite of sensors (RPC-MAG), whose measurements were already used to demonstrate that the comet nucleus is not magnetised.
However, since Rosetta’s comet is much less active than Comet Halley, the scientists predicted that a diamagnetic cavity could form only in the months around perihelion – the closest point to the Sun on the comet’s orbit – but that it would extend only 50 to 100 kilometres (31 to 62 miles) from the nucleus.
During 2015, the increased amounts of dust dragged into space by the outflowing gas became a significant problem for navigation close to the comet. To keep Rosetta safe, trajectories were chosen such that by the end of July 2015, a few weeks before perihelion, it was some 170 kilometres (105 miles) away from the nucleus. As a result, scientists considered that detecting signs of the magnetic field-free bubble would be impossible.
“We had almost given up on Rosetta finding the diamagnetic cavity, so we were astonished when we eventually found it,” says Charlotte Götz of the Institute for Geophysics and extraterrestrial Physics in Braunschweig, Germany.