The Solar Orbiter Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) instrument

¹ LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Univ. Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, 5 Place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
e-mail: [email protected]
² Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
³ Physics Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
⁴ Stellar Scientific (now HELIOSPACE), 932 Parker St suite 2, Berkeley, CA 94710, USA
⁵ LPP, CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, Sorbonne Université, Observatoire de Paris, Université Paris-Saclay, PSL Research University, Palaiseau, Paris, France
⁶ LPC2E, CNRS, 3A Avenue de la Recherche Scientifique, Orléans, France
⁷ Université d’Orléans, Orléans, France
⁸ Technische Universität Dresden, Würzburger Str. 35, 01187 Dresden, Germany
⁹ Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria
¹⁰ Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague 14131, Czech Republic
¹¹ Astronomical Institute, Czech Academy of Sciences, 14100 Prague, Czech Republic
¹² Swedish Institute of Space Physics (IRF), Uppsala, Sweden
¹³ Nexeya Conseil et Formation, 5 Rue Boudeville ZI de Thibaud, 31100 Toulouse, France
¹⁴ CNES, 18 Avenue Edouard Belin, 31400 Toulouse, France
¹⁵ Logiqual, Avenue Didier Daurat, 31700 Blagnac, France
¹⁶ Altran Sud Ouest 4, Avenue Didier Daurat, 31700 Blagnac, France
¹⁷ Université de Rennes, 1 – 263 Avenue du Général Leclerc, 35042 Rennes, France
¹⁸ Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
¹⁹ Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, MD, USA
²⁰ ASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
²¹ Department of Space and Plasma Physics, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
²² Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
²³ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA
²⁴ Department of Physics, Imperial College, SW7 2AZ London, UK
²⁵ School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Glasgow University, Glasgow, UK
²⁶ University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, 5210 Windisch, Switzerland
²⁷ IRAP, CNRS, Universit de Toulouse, UPS, Toulouse, France
²⁸ Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA
²⁹ Department of Astronomy, Faculty of Mathematics, University of Belgrade, Studentski trg 16, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia
³⁰ Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, Dorking RH5 6NT, UK
³¹ Space Research Group, Universidad de Alcala, Alcala de Henares, Spain
³² Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany
³³ ESA, ESAC, Madrid, Spain
³⁴ Radboud Radio Lab, Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP – Radboud University, PO Box 9010, 6500 GL Nijmegen, The Netherlands
³⁵ Commission for Astronomy, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria

Received: 29 June 2019
Accepted: 30 January 2020

Abstract

The Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) instrument on the ESA Solar Orbiter mission is described in this paper. This instrument is designed to measure in-situ magnetic and electric fields and waves from the continuous to a few hundreds of kHz. RPW will also observe solar radio emissions up to 16 MHz. The RPW instrument is of primary importance to the Solar Orbiter mission and science requirements since it is essential to answer three of the four mission overarching science objectives. In addition RPW will exchange on-board data with the other in-situ instruments in order to process algorithms for interplanetary shocks and type III langmuir waves detections.