Seeing the corona with the solar probe plus mission: the wide-field imager for solar probe+ (WISPR)
2013
The Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission scheduled for launch in 2018, will orbit between the Sun and Venus with
diminishing perihelia reaching as close as 7 million km (9.86 solar radii) from Sun center. In addition to a suite of in-situ
probes for the magnetic field, plasma, and energetic particles, SPP will be equipped with an imager. The Wide-field
Imager for the Solar PRobe+ (WISPR), with a 95° radial by 58° transverse field of view, will image the fine-scale
coronal structure of the corona, derive the 3D structure of the large-scale corona, and determine whether a dust-free zone
exists near the Sun. Given the tight mass constrains of the mission, WISPR incorporates an efficient design of two widefield
telescopes and their associated focal plane arrays based on novel large-format (2kx2k) APS CMOS detectors into
the smallest heliospheric imaging package to date. The flexible control electronics allow WISPR to collect individual
images at cadences up to 1 second at perihelion or sum several of them to increase the signal-to-noise during the
outbound part of the orbit. The use of two telescopes minimizes the risk of dust damage which may be considerable
close to the Sun. The dependency of the Thomson scattering emission of the corona on the imaging geometry dictates
that WISPR will be very sensitive to the emission from plasma close to the spacecraft in contrast to the situation for
imaging from Earth orbit. WISPR will be the first ‘local’ imager providing a crucial link between the large scale corona
and the in-situ measurements.
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