[P-EM11] Dynamics of the Inner Magnetospheric System

[PEM11-P13] STORM mission: Contributions from the Lyman Alpha Imaging Camera (LAICA)

*Kunihiro Keika¹, Masaki Kuwabara², Shingo Kameda², Yoshizumi Miyoshi³, Kazuo Yoshioka⁴, Go Murakami⁵ (1.Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo , 2.School of Science, Rikkyo University, 3.Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University, 4.Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, 5.Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency)

Keywords:magnetospheric imaging, solar wind-magnetosphere interactions, magnetotail and auroral activity , Geocorona, future satellite mission

This poster introduces the NASA’s Solar-Terrestrial Observer for the Response of the Magnetosphere (STORM) mission, which is currently under a Phase-A study of the 2019 Heliophysics Medium-Class Explorer (MIDEX), Announcement of Opportunity, with the launch readiness date scheduled for July 1, 2026. The focus is on the important roles played by the Lyman Alpha Imaging Camera (LAICA) in addressing primary science topics of the mission. Collaborations with in-situ and ground-based observations are also discussed.

STORM is planned to image the dayside magnetosphere and the ring current to quantify their response to solar wind drivers. Images from multi-wavelength and neutral atom measurements made on a ~30 Re circular orbit comprehensively track the end-to-end circulation of energy throughout the solar wind-magnetosphere system. High inclination of the orbit (~90 deg.) enables the mission to image a broad area of the magnetosphere from both the equatorial and polar regions. The imaging based on soft-X ray emissions, which originate from charge-exchange collisions of solar wind heavy ions and neutral hydrogen (Geocorona), covers both northern and southern hemisphere to determine the location and motion of the entire dayside magnetopause. The far ultraviolet (FUV) imaging captures spatial and temporal variations of electron and proton aurora. The measurements of energetic neutral atoms (ENAs), which are the products of charge-exchange interactions between ring current ions and Geocorona, determine the global distributions of the ring current ions and in turn ion pressure. Imaging by LAICA provides spatial distributions and temporal variations of Geocorona density, which is required to extract the density of the solar wind from the soft-Xray imaging and the fluxes of ring current ions from the ENA imaging.