Probing solar wind velocity from simultaneous superior solar conjunction radio science experiments of BepiColombo and Akatsuki missions

Abstract

A radio link directly probing the inner solar corona offers the possibility to characterize solar wind properties, including velocity, density, turbulence, and even the axial ratio. In this study, we leveraged radiometric data obtained during a joint superior solar conjunction of the ESA/JAXA BepiColombo mission and the JAXA Akatsuki mission. Our objective is to ascertain the solar wind velocity by analysing Doppler-shift timeseries of radio signals exchanged between the two spacecraft and two distinct ground stations. We conducted a cross-correlation analysis to determine the travel time of large-scale plasma density fluctuations as they intersect with the downlink signals of both spacecraft. This method is applied to the data collected on 2021 March 13 and 2021 March 14. The analysis of the March 13 data has shown that the two Doppler residuals timeseries present a clear correlation at a time-lag of 2910 s. Using the knowledge of the relative distance between the two probe-ground station lines of sight at the closest approach to the Sun, we estimated the solar wind velocity to be 421 ± 21 km s−1. Following the same procedure for the second experiment, we estimated the solar wind speed velocity to be 336 ± 7 km s−1. These results are compatible with the sampling of the slow solar wind at heliographic latitudes of −22◦ and −26◦, respectively.