Continuation of the support for the Swedish contribution to JUICE / PEP

JUICE (Jupiter Icy moon Explorer) is the first ESA L-class mission to be launched in 2022 to study Jupiter and the Gallilean moons from flyby trajectories (Callisto and Europa) and an orbit (Ganymede).

JUICE carries multi-disciplinary payload including Particle Environment Package (PEP) provided by the Solar System Physics and Space Technology program (SSPT) at the IRF office in Kiruna hereinafter called IRF-Kiruna.

PEP will answer the main scientific questions:How does the corotating magnetosphere of Jupiter interact with the Ganymede magnetosphere, inert Callisto, and active Europa?What is the contribution of the magnetospheric interaction to the induced magnetic field resulting from the subsurface ocean in Ganymede, Callisto, Europa?What is the composition of the Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto exospheres and its relation to the surface?What is the global impact of release of material from Io and Europa into the Jupiter magnetosphere (Io and Europa tori)?How does the Jupiter magnetosphere work?

What are the plasma transport, heating, and acceleration processes? What are the external and internal drivers?

How is the magneto-disk formed?PEP provides instantaneous measurements of 3D ion and electron fluxes and plasma composition, remote global imaging via Energetic Neutral atoms (ENAs) of the magnetospeheric plasmas, and conducts first-ever gas mass spectroscopy of the icy moons exospheres.

PEP consists of 7 separate units, one common electronic rack and 6 sensors, grouped into two independent groups, PEP-Lo (low energy plasma and neutral gas, only European contributions) and PEP-Hi (energetic and relativistic particles, only USA contribution).

PEP measures positive and negative ions, electrons, exospheric neutral gas, thermal plasma and energetic neutral atoms and covers nine (9) decades of energy from <0.001 eV to >1 MeV. PEP is built by a consortium of 19 groups (10 hardware providers) from 13 countries.

IRF-Kiruna is the Principal Investigator (PI) institute and provides an ion analyzer JDC (Jovian plasma Dynamics and Composition analyzer) and JNA (Jovian Neutrals Analyzer).

The other sensors include an electron analyzer JEI (Jovian Electrons and Ions) from MPS, Germany, neutral gas mass spectrometer NIM (Neutral gas and Ions Mass spectrometer) from UBe, Switzerland, energetic electrons sensor JoEE (Jovian Energetic Electrons), and combined ENA and energetic ion camera JENI (Jovian Energetic Neutrals and Ions) both from APL, USA.To March 2021 IRF-Kiruna delivered to ESA all required hardware (9 units) including flight models and is manufacturing flight spare models.

In 2022-2025 IRF-Kiruna will:Support JUICE level AIV (Assembly, Integration and Verification) activities leading to Flight Readiness Review (FRR) and JUICE launch in September 2022;Complete a swap of FS with PFM, if possible;Build a PEP-Lo Reference Model (RM) and required storage system;Continue onboard software development and testing and bug fixing, onboard look-up, settings, and high voltage tables updates and uploads as well as maintenance of the PEP-Lo reference models to ensure availability of the flight identical software throughout the entire nominal mission;Develop and maintain data processing and data display software including pipelines and software for test and calibration analysis;Develop, deliver, and maintain software and hardware to receive and archive science data from JUICE;Perform science operations including development of software for operation planning, generation of command time-lines, and execution of commissioning, cruise phase operations, and 3 fly-bys (the Moon 2023, Earth 2024, and Venus 2025);Perform science data analysis from 3 flybys to verify the instrument performance and exercise a Europa fly-by, and report science results;Manage the PEP team continuing serving as PEP PI-institute.