We describe existing research infrastructures relevant for space weather and open issues of space weather research including the need for sustainable observation networks and for high-quality data products as basis for model development. The local relevance in Europe for studies of the ionosphere at high latitude is described. We propose as possible a way forward to sustain space weather research ...

The Smoke Particle Impact Detector (SPID) was flown on the G-Chaser student rocket that was launched from Andøya on 13 January 2019. SPID is a Faraday cup instrument with applied bias voltages to deflect the ambient plasma and a target area inside the probe designed to measure the dust particles by charge detection. The charging process of the dust particles in the detector is important for interpretation ...

Comets, comet-like objects and their fragments are the most plausible source for the dust in both the inner heliosphere and planetary debris discs around other stars. The smallest size of dust particles in debris discs is not known and recent observational results suggest that the size distribution of the dust extends down to sizes of a few nanometres or a few tens of nanometres. In the Solar System, ...

We investigate the generation of charge due to collision between projectiles with sizes below ∼1 µm and metal surfaces at speeds ∼0.1 to 10 km s⁻¹. This corresponds to speeds above the elastic limit and well below speeds where volume ionization can occur. Impact charge production at these low to intermediate speeds has traditionally been described by invoking the theory of shock wave ...

We present the first study of dust impact events on one of the Earth‐orbiting Cluster satellites. The events were identified in the measurements of the wide band data (WBD) instrument on board the satellite operating in monopole configuration. Since 2009 the instrument is operating in this configuration due to the loss of three electric probes and is therefore measuring the potential between the ...

The electric and magnetic field instrument suite FIELDS on board the NASA Parker Solar Probe and the radio and plasma waves instrument RPW on the ESA Solar Orbiter mission that explore the inner heliosphere are sensitive to signals generated by dust impacts. Dust impacts have been observed using electric field antennas on spacecraft since the 1980s and the method was recently used with a number of ...

<p><i>Context</i>: Because of high charge-to-mass ratio, the nanodust dynamics near the Sun is determined by interplay between the gravity and the electromagnetic forces. Depending on the point where it was created, a nanodust particle can either be trapped in a non-Keplerian orbit, or escape away from the Sun, reaching large velocity. The main source of nanodust is collisional fragmentation of ...

<i>Aims</i>: We wish to investigate the energy conversion between particles and electromagnetic fields and determine the location where it occurs in the plasma environment of comets.<p> <p><i>Methods</i>: We used a hybrid plasma model that included photoionization, and we considered two cases of the solar extreme ultraviolet flux. Other parameters corresponded to the conditions of comet ...