Gas Dynamic Models of the Interaction between the Solar Wind and Cometary Atmospheres

Abstract

Gas dynamic models of the interaction between the solar wind and cometary atmospheres are considered. Interest in the development of such models arose sharply after the beginning of the investigations of comets with the use of spacecraft launched at distances close to their surfaces. The instruments on this spacecraft gave the possibility to investigate experimentally the parameters of gas flow out from the cometary surfaces when the comets approach the Sun and its interaction with the solar wind plasma flow, which could not be made using only the spectral photometry. The beginning of such studies was started by almost instantaneous approaching of several space probes to Halley’s Comet on March 1986. Only after 28 years, the Rosetta spacecraft launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) along a complex trajectory have approached comet Churyumov–Gerasimenko and, maneuvering in the neighborhood of this comet during more than two years, it, in particular, have investigated the interaction of the cometary atmosphere and the solar wind.