Emptying of Jupiter’s Plasma Disk in March 2018

Abstract

Huscher et al. (2021) presented a survey of the Juno-JADE plasma data over orbits 5-26 between March 2017 and April 2020, focusing on the inbound plasma sheet crossings. There was one particular orbit, PJ12, where the plasma sheet was notably absent with very low densities. Juno traversed from 50 RJ in to 10 RJ between Day Of Year 87 to 91 in 2018. The orbits before and after showed typical plasma sheet densities. The Juno-JEDI data showed low energetic particle fluxes at these times and the Juno-FGM magnetic field data were consistent with a significantly reduced magnetodisc current (Connerney et al. 2020). We present the range of Juno data for this period, compare with extrapolation of solar wind conditions to 5 AU, and estimate the time scales for emptying and re-filling of the plasma disk