Plasma Turbulence Studies Enabled by a Multi-Point, Multi-Scale Spacecraft Observatory

Fully characterizing the transport of mass, momentum, and energy through turbulent plasma systems requires simultaneous measurements at multiple points spanning characteristic length scales. The HelioSwarm Observatory (HS), a NASA mission set to launch at the end of the decade, has been designed to make such measurements in the solar wind, magnetosheath, and magnetosphere, revealing the three-dimensional, dynamic mechanisms controlling the physics of turbulence in near-Earth plasmas. The observatory is composed of nine spacecraft, consisting of a "Hub" spacecraft and eight smaller "Nodes". Flight dynamics design and on-board propulsion produce ideal inter-spacecraft separations ranging from fluid scales (1000's of km) to sub-ion kinetic scales (10's of km) in the necessary geometries to enable the application of a variety of established multi-point techniques that distinguish between proposed models of turbulence. In this presentation, we discuss the application of these techniques to synthetic spacecraft data drawn from numerical simulation of turbulence.