Spacecraft observes aurora above Mars
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.028721
BBC : The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft, launched by NASA in November 2013, has been exploring the Red Planet’s upper atmosphere since it arrived there in September 2014. As reported at the 46th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference being held this week in Texas, last December MAVEN detected the presence of a bright UV auroral glow in Mars’s northern hemisphere, similar to the northern lights that can be observed on Earth. However, the high-energy particles responsible for the phenomenon appear to penetrate much deeper into the atmosphere of Mars than they do on Earth, perhaps because Mars lacks Earth’s protective magnetic field. The aurora sighting, and the detection of dust at altitudes of 150–300 km, may help further MAVEN‘s mission of determining how Mars’s atmosphere evolved.
