The Energetic Particle Detector (EPD) onboard Solar Orbiter is a suite of multiple sensors (Suprathermal Electrons Protons, STEP; Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph, SIS; Electron Proton Telescope, EPT; High Energy Telescope, HET), which measures particle intensities over a wide range of energies (from suprathermal to relativistic energies) and for different species (electron, protons, and heavy ions) in different directions. The EPD data center (http://espada.uah.es/epd) offers a primer venue to inspect the Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) activity, both to promptly check the most recent solar activity using quicklook plots based on low-latency data sets, and to perform deeper studies with data validated for scientific use. Among others, a series of plots and relevant information, such as the spacecraft maneuvers or sensor updates, are provided to the community. This facility gives access to all the data from the EPD sensors (which can be also found in the Solar Orbiter Archive), including Level 2 (calibrated) as well as more elaborated Level 3 data in the near future, which have further processing. An application programming interface (API) is also offered for accessing EPD data. Besides, during the first year and a half of observations, Solar Orbiter has completed three orbits, and EPD has measured several increases in particle fluxes, due to heliospheric and solar-origin events. Some of the events have been analysed and the flux enhancements have been tagged for future studies. This work aims to let the community know the availability of the instrument data products, and to explain how to properly use the provided data products and plots, as well as to summarise all the available studies published until now.

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.

Context: Late on 2013 August 19, a coronal mass ejection (CME) erupted from an active region located near the far-side central meridian from Earth’s perspective. The event and its accompanying shock was remotely observed by the STEREO-A, STEREO-B and SOHO spacecraft. The interplanetary (IP) counterpart (ICME) intercepted MESSENGER near 0.3 au, and both STEREO-A and STEREO-B, near 1 au, which were separated by 78 degrees in longitude. Aims: The main objective of this study is to follow the radial and longitudinal evolution of the ICME throughout the heliosphere, and to examine possible scenarios for the different magnetic flux- rope (MFR) signatures observed on the solar disk, and measured at the locations of MESSENGER and STEREO-A, separated by 15 degrees in heliolongitude, and at STEREO-B, which detected the ICME flank. Methods: Solar disk observations are used to estimate the ‘MFR type’ and the graduated cylindrical shell model is used to reconstruct the CME in the corona. The analysis of in-situ data, namely, plasma and magnetic field, is used to estimate the global IP shock geometry and to derive the MFR type at different in-situ locations. The elliptical cylindrical analytical model is used for the in-situ MFR reconstruction. Results: The MFR structure detected at STEREO-B belongs to the same magnetic structure detected at MESSENGER and STEREO-A. The different helicity deduced at STEREO-B, might be due to the spacecraft intercepting one of the legs of the MFR, while STEREO-A and MESSENGER are crossing through the core of the structure. The opposite polarity measured at MESSENGER and STEREO-A arises because the two spacecraft measure a curved, highly distorted and rather complex MFR topology. The ICME may have suffered additional distortion in its evolution in the heliosphere, resulting in different expansion and arrival time of the IP shock flanks at 1 au.