The Early History of Heliospheric Science and the Spacecraft That Made It Possible

G P Zank; V Sterken; J Giacalone; E Möbius; R von Steiger; E S Stone; S M Krimigis; J D Richardson; J Linsky; V Izmodenov; B Heber

doi:10.1007/s11214-022-00900-8

The Early History of Heliospheric Science and the Spacecraft That Made It Possible

Space Sci Rev. 2022;218(4):34. doi: 10.1007/s11214-022-00900-8. Epub 2022 May 25.

Authors

G P Zank^{1

2}, V Sterken³, J Giacalone⁴, E Möbius⁵, R von Steiger⁶, E S Stone⁷, S M Krimigis⁸, J D Richardson⁹, J Linsky¹⁰, V Izmodenov^{11

12}, B Heber¹³

Affiliations

¹ Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR), University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35805 USA.
² Department of Space Science, University of Alabama in Huntsville, Huntsville, AL 35805 USA.
³ ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
⁴ Department of Planetary Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
⁵ University of New Hampshire, Durham, USA.
⁶ International Space Science Institute, Bern, Switzerland.
⁷ California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA.
⁸ Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA.
⁹ Kavli Center for Astrophysics and Space Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA.
¹⁰ JILA, University of Colorado and NIST, Boulder, CO 80309 USA.
¹¹ Center for Fundamental and Applied Mathematics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.
¹² Space Research Institute (IKI) Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia.
¹³ University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany.

Abstract

Our understanding of the interaction of the large-scale heliosphere with the local interstellar medium (LISM) has undergone a profound change since the very earliest analyses of the problem. In part, the revisions have been a consequence of ever-improving and widening observational results, especially those that identified the entrance of interstellar material and gas into the heliosphere. Accompanying these observations was the identification of the basic underlying physics of how neutral interstellar gas and interstellar charged particles of different energies, up to and including interstellar dust grains, interacted with the temporal flows and electromagnetic fields of the heliosphere. The incorporation of these various basic effects into global models of the interaction, whether focused on neutral interstellar gas and pickup ions, energetic particles such as anomalous and galactic cosmic rays, or magnetic fields and large-scale flows, has profoundly changed our view of how the heliosphere and LISM interact. This article presents a brief history of the conceptual and observation evolution of our understanding of the interaction of the heliosphere with the local interstellar medium, up until approximately 1996.

Keywords: Heliosphere; Interstellar medium.

Publication types

Review