New Views of the Solar Wind Formation and Origin from the Parker Solar Probe
The Parker solar probe (PSP) mission launched by NASA in 2018 was designed to study the solar wind at unprecedently close distances to the Sun – a mission to “touch the Sun”. The spacecraft was designed to approach the Sun to 9.89 solar radii through a series of orbits using Venus gravitational assist flybys. The PSP carries a suite of scientific instruments that include the Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) Investigation, the Wide-field Imager for Solar PRobe (WISPR), and the Integrated Science Investigation of the sun (IS☉IS) that detects energetic electrons, protons and heavy ions. On 24 December 2024 PSP has made its first closest approach to the Sun providing unprecedent new observations of the solar wind in the acceleration region. The observations provided unprecedented new details of solar wind plasma close to the Sun that revolutionized our understanding of the of solar wind formation and origin. Some of the discoveries are the detection of magnetic switchbacks, the strong kinetic wave activity and ion kinetic instabilities in the solar wind plasma. I will provide an overview of the PSP main discoveries and will present our recent work that uses PSP data for modeling of the main kinetic mechanisms associated with solar wind heating and acceleration. I will discuss the impact of PSP discoveries on our understanding of the heliospheric plasma.
Prof. Leon Ofman received his B.Sc. in Physics in 1986 and M.Sc. in Physics in 1988 from Tel Aviv University, Israel, and his Ph.D. in Physics in 1992 from the University of Texas at Austin. He held National Research Council Postdoctoral Research Associateship at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from 1992 to 1994. Since 1994 Prof. Ofman continued working at NASA GSFC, as a contractor via Hughes and Raytheon corporations, and in 2001 he became a Research Associate Professor at Catholic University of America, Associate Professor (2005-2007), and a university affiliate at NASA GSFC to present. From 2007 Prof. Ofman became Visiting Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University. In 2009 Prof. Ofman became Research Professor at CUA’s Department of Physics and Institute for Astrophysics and Computational Sciences (IACS). His main research interests are in solar plasma physics, MHD, waves and instabilities, and kinetic processes related to coronal heating and solar wind acceleration. His main expertise is in numerical modeling of the solar coronal and wind plasma, driven by space based observations. Prof. Ofman has authored and coauthored over 150 publications in solar physics and related fields in refereed journals, and in conference proceeding. Prof. Ofman is the Principal Investigator on NASA and NSF grants supervising postdocs and students that work in solar physics. Prof. Ofman was a member of NASA Science Definition Team for the Solar Probe Plus mission. He is serving as a referee for leading journals in the field, and a reviewer for US and international science funding agencies. Prof. Ofman is a member of the AAS/SPD, AGU, IAU, and COSPAR.