Two projects coordinated by INAF researchers have been selected by the Swiss International Space Science Institute-ISSI to exploit the opportunity that every year is offered to research projects to promote international collaboration and exchange of knowledge among researchers.

The first project, coordinated by Fabio Gastaldello, from the Institute of Space Astrophysics and Cosmic Physics-IASF of Milan, focuses on “soft” protons found in the Earth’s magnetosphere.

“Large space telescopes such as Xmm-Newton, sent into space to capture X photons from cosmic sources, have shown to be very much able to capture and concentrate protons found in the Earth’s magnetosphere along their orbit”, said Gastaldello, “generating a background noise that can compromise a considerable share of scientific observations. We still know little of the physics of this phenomenon, and our team intends to investigate this in greater detail”.

The second study, coordinated by Mauro Ciarniello, from the Institute for Space Astrophysics and Planetology-IAPS in Rome, will analyse the composition of the surface of 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as Rosetta’s Comet.

https://www.researchitaly.it/en/news/astrophysics-issi-selected-two-projects-by-inaf-researchers/#mce_temp_url#