Abstract
The Wind spacecraft is a critical element in NASA’s Heliophysics
System Observatory (HSO) – a fleet of spacecraft created to understand
the dynamics of the sun-Earth system – owing to the combination of its
longevity (>25 years in service), its diverse compliment of
instrumentation, and high resolution and accurate measurements.
Wind has over 55 selectable public data products with over
~1100 total data variables (including OMNI data
products) on SPDF/CDAWeb alone. These data have led to paradigm shifting
results in studies of statistical solar wind trends, magnetic
reconnection, large-scale solar wind structures, kinetic physics,
electromagnetic turbulence, the Van Allen radiation belts, coronal mass
ejection topology, interplanetary and interstellar dust, the lunar wake,
solar radio bursts, solar energetic particles, and extreme astrophysical
phenomena such as gamma-ray bursts. This review introduces the mission
and instrument suites then discusses examples of the contributions by
Wind to these scientific topics that emphasize its importance to
both the fields of heliophysics and astrophysics.