Journal
SPACE SCIENCE REVIEWS
Volume 192, Issue 1-4, Pages 237-283Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s11214-015-0172-9
Keywords
Saturn; Magnetosphere; Satellites; Plasma transport; Solar wind; Radiation belts
Categories
Funding
- Swedish National Space Board (Rymdstylresan)
- UCL-MSSL consolidated grant from STFC, UK
- NASA Cassini mission through JHU/APL
- Science and Technology Facilities Council Ernest Rutherford Fellowship
- NASA Cassini Data Analysis Program [NNX12AK34G]
- NASA Cassini mission [1409449]
- JPL
- NASA [NAS5-97271, 003]
- NASA Cassini Data Analysis Program
- NASA Outer Planets Research Program
- Science and Technology Facilities Council [ST/L001683/1, ST/K000977/1, ST/L004399/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- UK Space Agency [ST/J00460X/1, ST/I002642/1, PP/D00084X/1] Funding Source: researchfish
- STFC [ST/K000977/1, ST/L004399/1] Funding Source: UKRI
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This article reviews the different sources of plasma for Saturn's magnetosphere, as they are known essentially from the scientific results of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan. At low and medium energies, the main plasma source is the cloud produced by the geyser activity of the small satellite Enceladus. Impact ionization of this cloud occurs to produce on the order of 100 kg/s of fresh plasma, a source which dominates all the other ones: Titan (which produces much less plasma than anticipated before the Cassini mission), the rings, the solar wind (a poorly known source due to the lack of quantitative knowledge of the degree of coupling between the solar wind and Saturn's magnetosphere), and the ionosphere. At higher energies, energetic particles are produced by energy diffusion and acceleration of lower energy plasma produced by the interchange instabilities induced by the rapid rotation of Saturn, and possibly, for the highest energy range, by contributions from the CRAND process acting inside Saturn's magnetosphere. Discussion of the transport and acceleration processes acting on these plasma sources shows the importance of rotation-induced radial transport and energization of the plasma, and also shows how much the unexpected planetary modulation of essentially all plasma parameters of Saturn's magnetosphere remains an unexplained mystery.
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