HelioSwarm: Swarm Mission Design in High Altitude Orbit for Heliophysics

Resolving the complex three-dimensional turbulent structures that characterize the solar wind requires contemporaneous spatially and temporally distributed measurements. HelioSwarm is a mission concept that will deploy multiple, co-orbiting satellites to use the solar wind as a natural laboratory for understanding the fundamental, universal process of plasma turbulence. The HelioSwarm transfer trajectory and science orbit use a lunar gravity assist to deliver the ESPA-class nodes attached to a large data transfer hub to a P/2 lunar resonant orbit. Once deployed in the science orbit, the free-flying, propulsive nodes use simple Cartesian relative motion patterns to establish baseline separations both along and across the solar wind flow direction.