Convergence Space Experiment: Scientific Objectives, Onboard Equipment, and Methods of Solving Inverse Problems

The purpose of this research is to present a detailed description of the proposed Convergence space mission on the Russian segment of the International Space Station for the wider scientific community. The key features of the mission are (1) the necessity of creating a new type of multifrequency radio-thermal airborne complexes with a specialized set of operating frequencies and with the formation of algorithms and software for the three-dimensional recovery of the water-vapor field in the lower troposphere and for estimating the horizontal advection and convective latent heat fluxes at different altitudes and with different forms of boundaries of the investigated regions. (2) An important part of the mission is the global monitoring of optical transient activity, including lightning in cloud tropospheric systems and electric discharges in the upper atmosphere, which are accompanied by a variety of short-term optical glows, commonly called transient luminous events. A significant contribution to the elucidation of the physics and the development of models of high-altitude electric discharges is the synchronous operation of the lightning detector and gamma detector to search for and study gamma-ray bursts of terrestrial origin, including those in previously unexplored latitudes, up to ±51°. It seems that the proposed instrumental configuration and integrity of the mission, which includes the synchronous operation of devices of different ranges of electromagnetic radiation (both the microwave range and optical and gamma range) will contribute significantly to the elucidation of the physics of processes of interaction of catastrophic atmospheric phenomena of the hydrodynamic type, i.e., tropical cyclones, with the electrical activity of tropospheric cloud systems (the field of lightning discharges) and activity of high-altitude electric discharges, which, in turn, can serve as a serious experimental basis for the formation of physical ideas about the genesis of gamma-ray outbreaks of terrestrial origin.