Planetary Space Weather
We are a planetary space weather research team at the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). We develop global particle-based space weather simulations to study space plasma physics in the solar system and beyond, and we apply our models to the interpretation of observations from several spacecraft exploration missions.
Our research focuses on how the solar wind, and flowing magnetised plasmas in general, interact with the magnetospheres, exospheres, surfaces, and atmospheres of planetary bodies. By combining numerical modeling with spacecraft measurements, we investigate the physical processes that shape planetary plasma environments and their response to changing space weather conditions.
Our work is funded by the European Research Council through the Mercury in the solar wind (MEOW) project, where we develop novel particle modeling methods to interpret observations from the BepiColombo mission. These methods are also applicable to other planetary environments and help connect local spacecraft observations with the global structure and dynamics of space plasmas.