Indirect identification of a low-altitude layer in the Martian nightside ionosphere during a space weather event with Mars Express-MARSIS radar data
Résumé
The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS) on board the Mars Express (MEX) mission suffered from a complete blackout for 10 days in September 2017 when it was sampling the subsurface of the planet during the nightside. We propose that this blackout of MARSIS data was caused by the solar energetic particles (SEP) of few tens of keV associated with a space weather event that hit Mars between the ~11 th and the 21 st of that month. Electron precipitation are believed to produce a low ionospheric layer on the nightside, which absorbed the radar signals. In this study, we assess the properties of this low ionospheric layer based on the radar attenuation observations.
Domaines
Planète et Univers [physics]Origine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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