Energy deposition in the coma of comet 67P probed by Rosetta

The ESA/Rosetta mission is the first to escort a comet along its orbit. It gathered a unique and rich dataset from its arrival in summer 2014 (when comet 67P was at a distance of 3.6 AU from the Sun), through perihelion at 1.2 AU reached in August 2015, and then post-perihelion up to the end of mission on September 30, 2016 (at a distance of 3.8 AU from the Sun). Rosetta observed a plasma of primarily cometary origin from its arrival but which varied and evolved with season, cometocentric distance, outgassing rate, and heliocentric distance. The project will build upon the observations of the neutral coma and plasma environment from the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) and Rosetta Plasma Consortium (RPC) sensors as well as the Far Ultraviolet measurements from Alice onboard Rosetta. The aims of the project include the identification of the energy source yielding the emissions observed by Alice and the presence of cold and warm plasma populations observed by RPC sensors.