[P-PS05] Science of Venus: knowing more about the earth's sister planet

[PPS05-05] BepiColombo’s scenic tour of Venus reveals the gas-dynamic nature of its solar wind interaction

★Invited Papers

*Moa Persson¹, Sae Aizawa¹, Nicolas Andre¹, Stas Barabash², Yoshifumi Saito³, Yuki Harada⁴, Daniel Heyner⁵, Stefano Orsini⁶, Andrei Fedorov¹, Christian Mazelle¹, Yoshifumi Futaana², Lina Hadid⁷, Martin Volwerk⁸, Glyn Collinson⁹, Beatriz Sanchez-Cano¹⁰, Alain Barthe¹, Emmanuel Penou¹, Shoichiro Yokota¹¹, Vincent Genot¹, J.A. Sauvaud¹, Dominique Delcourt⁷, Markus Fraenz¹², Ronan Modolo¹³, Anna Milillo⁶, H.-U. Auster⁵, Ingo Richter⁵, J.Z.D. Mieth⁵, Philippe Louarn¹, C.J. Owen¹⁴, T.S. Horbury¹⁵, Kazushi Asamura³, Shoya Matsuda¹⁶, Hans Nilsson², Martin Wieser², Tommaso Alberti⁶, Ali Varsani⁸, Valeria Mangano⁶, Alessandro Mura⁶, Herbert Lichtenegger⁸, Gunther Laky⁸, H Jeszenszky⁸, Kei Masunaga³, Claire Signoles¹, Mathias Rojo¹, Go Murakami³ (1.Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planetologie, CNRS-UPS-CNES, Toulouse, France, 2.Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden, 3.Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Japan, 4.Department of Geophysics, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, 5.Institute for Geophysics and Extraterrestrial Physics, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany, 6.Institute of Space Astrophysics and Planetology, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Rome, Italy, 7.Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (LPP), CNRS, Observatoire de Paris, Sorbonne Universite, Universite Paris Saclay, Ecole Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, 8.Space Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graz, Austria, 9.National Aeronautic and Space Administration, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland, USA, 10.School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK, 11.Department of Earth and Space Science, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University, Japan, 12.Max-Planck-Institute for Solar System Research, Göttingen, Germany, 13.LATMOS, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Universite Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, Universite Paris-Saclay, Universite Pierre Marie Curie, CNRS, France, 14.Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Holmbury St. Mary, UK, 15.Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, UK, 16.Graduate School of Natural Science and Technology, Kanazawa University, Kanazawa, Japan)

Keywords:Venus, BepiColombo, Stagnation region, Solar Orbiter, Space plasma

With the 2^nd Venus flyby by BepiColombo on August 10^th 2021, we had the rare opportunity to make a complete tour of the Venusian magnetosheath: one of the few gas-dynamic dominated solar wind-object interaction regions in the Solar System. The flyby passed through the full magnetosheath, from the nightside flank towards the stagnation region near the subsolar point and out through a quasi-perpendicular bow shock. The flyby was made during the extremely rare opportunity when Solar Orbiter was located upstream, close to Venus, due to its Venus flyby the day before. Solar Orbiter could therefore provide complementary solar wind measurements, which showed very stable conditions during the BepiColombo flyby. The rare spacecraft configuration and the stable conditions provided new intel on the never-before-seen stagnation point at near solar minimum conditions, as measured by seven plasma and magnetic field instruments on BepiColombo. The measurements show a stagnation region expanded to large distances from Venus, which confirms that Venus is fully capable of withstanding the solar wind even at near solar minimum conditions.