Thank you for your reading and interest in the news A new and strange type of Martian aurora is announced and now with full details
Aden – Yasmine Abdullah Al-Tohamy – NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) and the Emirati Hope Probe have joined forces to study the ultraviolet aurora borealis that dances and glows high in the Martian atmosphere.
The new research reveals that these diurnal events are not always diffuse, featureless and evenly distributed, but are highly dynamic and variable, and contain minute structures.
The discovery of a strange new type of Martian aurora
Planetary scientist Mike Chavin of the University of Colorado Boulder said: “EMM observations indicate that the aurora was so widespread and disorganized that the plasma environment around Mars must have been really turbulent, to the point that the solar wind was directly affecting the atmosphere. “The upper atmosphere is wherever we observe auroral emission. By combining the auroral observations of the EMM with MAVEN measurements of the auroral plasma environment, we can confirm this hypothesis and determine that what we see was essentially a map of where the solar wind rains on the planet.”
Proton auroras – the most common auroras on the Red Planet – were first described in 2018, as shown in MAVEN data. They form somewhat similar to how auroras form on Earth; However, since Mars is an entirely different beast, without an internally driven magnetosphere like Earth, the end result is unique to Mars.
Proton auroras form when positively charged protons in the solar wind collide with Mars’ hydrogen shell and ionize, stealing electrons from hydrogen atoms to become neutral.
This charge exchange allows neutral particles to bypass the shock of the magnetic field around Mars, raining into the upper atmosphere and emitting ultraviolet light.
It was believed that this process reliably produced a uniform auroral emission over the course of Martian days. New notes show otherwise.
Instead of the expected smooth profile, data from the Hope probe show that auroras are sometimes patchy, suggesting that there might be unknown processes during the formation of these aurorae.
NASA’s orbiter carries a full suite of plasma instruments to explore the solar wind, magnetic environment, and thermal ions in space around Mars.
In other words, the rare chaotic interaction between Mars and the solar wind is responsible for the patchy aurora.
However, there might be long-term effects on the atmosphere and water loss; Without a global magnetic field, Mars continues to lose both.
Interestingly, the proton auroras – whether smooth or patchy – might help us understand at least one of these, given that the hydrogen involved is created in part by water in the Martian atmosphere seeping into space.
“Several future data and modeling studies will be required to explore the full effects of these conditions on the evolution of the Martian atmosphere,” the researchers wrote.
The research was published in Geophysical Research Letters.
NASA announced that the third attempt to launch its new lunar rocket will not occur in the coming days, following a fuel leak halted a second launch attempt.
NASA rules out the launch of the NASA mission, delaying the launch of its rocket to the moon for the second time
Jim Free, associate director of exploration systems development at NASA, said that the current launch period for the “Artemis-1” mission ends on Tuesday, and we will not launch it during this period.
The Artemis I test mission, set to last 42 days, aims to take the Orion rover 40,000 miles from the far side of the moon, and depart from the same location where the Apollo lunar missions were organized half a century ago.
