On March 15, 2024, the sun released a powerful sunlight, which coincided with an increased time of solar activity. This was accompanied by a coronal mass emissions (CME), a massive cloud of solar energetic particles (SEP), which led to Auroras in the entire solar system. This included Mars, where the endurance of NASA wrote the story by capturing a visible photo of the event with his Mastcam-Z instrument. This was the first time that an Aurora was observed from the surface of another planet.
On earth, Auroras are a common phenomenon that occurs when sun particles interact with the global magnetic field. This field channel these energetic particles in the direction of the poles, where they interact with atmospheric gases to create the famous northern lights (Aurora borealis) and Southern Lights (Aurora Austria). While Mars does not have a global magnetic field like the earth, it has localized magnetic fields and a very thin atmosphere in comparison (less than 1% of the atmospheric pressure)).
On earth, the most common color connected to Auroras is green, which is caused by the stimulation of oxygen atoms. Scientists predicted for years that Mars could also experience Auroras with green light, except that they could be formed far weaker and more difficult. Therefore, all earlier observations of Auroras were carried out on the Mars of Orbiter in ultraviolet wavelengths. This includes the Mars atmosphere of NASA and the volatile development (Maven), which observed a SEP aurora from the orbit in 2014.
As a result, the recording of this image required serious coordination and timing. Elise Knutsen, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oslo in Norway, was the main author of the study, which reported on the detection that recently appeared in scientific advances. Since Seps typically occur during solar storms, especially during the highlight of the eleven -year sun cycle of the sun (also known as a solar maximum), knotters planned and their team planned their observations to summarize the top value of the current sun cycle.
They also created models that determined the optical angle for the Supercam spectrometer and the Mastcam Z camera of the Perseverance Rover to observe it. The next step was to wait in the right way of CME. This task fell on the moon of NASA on Mars (M2M) space analysis office and the community coordined modeling center (CCMC) in the Goddard Space Flight Center of the NASA. The former provides real-time analysis of solar outbreaks to CCMC, in which the data is used to carry out simulations of CMES and determine whether they could affect NASA missions.
If your simulations predict a potentially dangerous CME, the M2M team sends out of the warning. As Knutsen explained in a press release from NASA:
“The trick was to choose a good CME that accelerates and injected many invited particles into the Mars atmosphere. When we saw the strength this time, we estimated that it could trigger it [an] Aurora bright enough so that our instruments can recognize. This exciting discovery opens up new opportunities for auroral research and confirms that Auroras could be visible to future astronauts on the Mars surface. “
The team included researchers from Colorado's laboratory for atmosphere and space physics (LASP), UC Berkeley, Nasas Goddard Space Flight Center and Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which together monitor the Maven mission of NASA. By coordinating the observations of Perseverance with measurements from Mavens SEP instrument, the teams helped to determine that the discovered light was the same emission line as green Aurora on earth.
“The observations of the persistence of the Aurora for visible light confirm a new way to examine these phenomena that are what we can observe with our Mars orbiters,” said Katie Stack Morgan, the reigning project scientist for endurance in the Jet drive laboratory of NASA. “A better understanding of the Auroras and the conditions around Mars that lead to their education are particularly important because we prepare to send human explorers safely there.”
In addition, future astronauts can see this type of Aurora from the Mars surface of the Mars surface. While most will be difficult to recognize, Mission Crews could spend up to a year on the surface,
Further reading: NASA
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