Missions

The IRAP team involved in the Jupiter Energetic Neutrals and Ions (JENI) instrument of the Par-ticle Environment Package (PEP) instrumental suite onboard the Juice space mission is seeking a scientist to perform, starting October 15, 2025

Activités

1) the analysis of Neutral Energetic Atoms data obtained by the Juno mission in operation around Jupiter and their assimilation into a plasma-neutral interaction model to prepare for the exploitation of PEP data onboard the Juice mission once in orbit around Jupiter;
2) the ingestion into the processing, analysis, and visualization tools of the Center for Space Plasma Physics (CDPP, https://cdpp.irap.omp.eu), notably the Clweb and AMDA tools (https://amda.cdpp.eu), of data obtained by the JENI instrument during Juice's flyby of Earth and the Moon.

Schedule:
T0-T0+6 months: exploitation of data from the JEDI instrument on board the Juno space mis-sion to derive the properties of Neutral Energetic Atoms in Jupiter's magnetosphere; assimila-tion of these data into a model of plasma-neutral interactions at Jupiter.

T0+6 months-T0+12 months: ingestion into CDPP and IRAP tools of JENI data obtained during Juice's flyby of the Earth and the moon; development of a prototype analysis tool for the orbital phase at Jupiter.

Compétences

- Space plasma physics
- Imaging of neutral energetic atoms
- Python
- Plasma instrumentation (charged particle detectors)
- Plasma data processing
- Plasma data archiving

Contexte de travail

IRAP (https://www.irap.omp.eu) is a joint research unit supervised by the CNRS, Paul Sabatier University, and CNES. It is a laboratory of the Midi-Pyrénées Observatory (OMP) with approxi-mately 300 employees, making it the largest laboratory in the field of "Astrophysics and As-tronomy" in France.

Juice (JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) is the first L-class mission of the European Space Agency's Cosmic Vision program, selected in May 2012. This mission launched in 2022 by Ariane 5 from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, for arrival at Jupiter in 2030. The probe will navigate the Jupiter system, flying several times past the Galilean moons Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, before entering orbit around Ganymede, the largest moon in the Solar System. This will mark the first time the probe will enter orbit around a moon of another planet. The scientific objec-tives of the JUICE mission consist of the in-depth study of Jupiter's atmosphere, its magneto-sphere, and its moons, in particular Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. The mission will notably allow the study of gravitational and electrodynamic interactions operating in the Jupiter sys-tem, as well as the habitability of icy moons and their subsurface liquid oceans.

The PEP (Particle Environment Package) experiment is a particle and plasma measurement in-strument comprising six sensors divided into two units:

• an ion mass spectrometer (JDC),
• an electron spectrometer (JEI),
• a low-energy Neutral Energetic Atoms imager (JNA),
• an Energetic Neutral Atoms and Energetic Ions imager (JENI),
• an energetic electron detector (JoEE),
• and a neutral and ion mass spectrometer (NIM).

The PEP experiment will measure positive and negative ions, electrons, exospheric neutral gas, low-energy plasma, and Neutral Energetic Atoms observed in all regions of the Jupiter system over more than nine decades in energy, from greater than 0.001 eV to greater than 1 MeV, with complete angular cov-erage.

The JENI (Jupiter Energetic Neutral Imager) instrument is an imager of energetic neutral atoms (0.5-300 keV) and high-energy ions (less than 5 MeV) designed and built by APL/JHU (Applied Physics Laboratory/Johns Hopkins University) in the United States with a technical contribution from IRAP. It is part of the PEP experiment, designed to study charged and neutral particle popula-tions in the magnetized environments of Jupiter (a typical example of a rapidly rotating magne-tosphere) and Ganymede (a typical example of a mini-magnetosphere), as well as in the vicinity of the Galilean moons Europa and Calisto.

The successful candidate will benefit from the support of the scientific and computing teams involved in JUICE/PEP at IRAP, as well as the technical teams involved at CDPP.

Le poste se situe dans un secteur relevant de la protection du potentiel scientifique et technique (PPST), et nécessite donc, conformément à la réglementation, que votre arrivée soit autorisée par l'autorité compétente du MESR.

Contraintes et risques

Mission abroad