Plasma environments in the solar system

This consolidated grant supports a programme of STFC-funded research into the physics of various plasma environments within our solar system. The programme is thus divided into three distinct projects, the aims of which are as follows:
- to determine the extent to which internal magnetospheric processes disrupt the solar wind control of large- scale magnetospheric dynamics and ensuing space weather, by considering phenomena that decouple the solar wind- magnetosphere-ionosphere system.
- to exploit data from Mars- and Saturn-orbiting spacecraft to study magnetic flux ropes, a phenomenon linked to the loss of planetary atmospheres from unmagnetised bodies, to understand their role in solar-planetary coupling.
- to identify how energy from the Sun affects Saturn, through the study of Saturn's auroral emissions observed by Cassini and the Hubble Space Telescope under the extremes of solar cycle activity.