The same giant sunspot that was responsible for causing a historic geomagnetic storm on Earth in mid-May caused a legendary storm on Mars a few days later.
On May 20, data from Europe’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft showed that a solar flare rated X12 – the strongest type on the flame classification scale – erupted from sunspot AR3664 (which was renamed AR3697 on its second trip around the sun). A powerful one extraction of the coronal mass (CME) followed, sending a huge cloud of super-hot solar plasma toward Mars at millions of miles per hour.
The impacts from this solar event provided quite an education for scientists watching as it unfolded. Researcher with NASA MAVEN orbiter, 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, and Mars Curiosity rover each played a key role in capturing data from the event that will help us better understand our neighbor planet and plan for future crewed visits to it.
“We really got it the full range of space weather on Mars from May 11-20, large flares, CMEs, and an extremely energetic solar particle erupted, and we’re only just beginning to scratch the surface by analyzing the data. The May 14 explosion really went as expected,” Ed Thiemann, a heliophysicist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Space.com in an email.
“The explosion inflated and significantly heated the Martian atmosphere as expected, and the resulting CME did indeed produce auroraThiemann added.
MAVEN (short for “Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution”) had a front-row seat to the spectacular aurora display over Mars. But the way auroras are created in Martian atmosphere it is very different from what happens here on Earth.
The Earth has a magnetic field that protects us from charged particles. This field channels such particles poleward, which is why auroras are usually only visible from high latitudes. Mars, on the other hand, lost its magnetic field in ancient times and is thus not shielded from these particles. So when particles hit the Martian atmosphere, the resulting auroras are spread across the planet.
Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument can pick up the most energetic particles that reach the Red Planet’s surface, but it’s the less energetic ones that create the stunning auroras. That’s where MAVEN’s Energetic Solar Particle instrument comes into play, allowing scientists to measure the energy that creates the aurora and recreate the event.
“This was the largest energetic solar particle event MAVEN has ever seen,” said Christina Lee, MAVEN Space Weather Lead at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Science Laboratory. a recent NASA publication. “There have been several solar events in the past weeks, so we were seeing wave after wave of particles hitting Mars.”
Curiosity’s RAD instrument also played an important role, gathering information to better educate scientists about how solar storms impact the Martian surface.
For example, the RAD data showed how much radiation the particle storm generated in Curiosity’s vicinity—a dose of about 8,100 micrograys. If a person had been standing next to the rover at that time, they would have absorbed the radiation equivalent of 30 chest X-rays! This was the largest increase ever detected in Curiosity’s 12-year lifetime on Mars. To give you an idea of how much solar energy was generated by this event, just look at the black and white camera image from a navigation camera on Curiosity (pictured above). There was so much power when the storm hit the Martian surface that white patches of “snow” were sprayed across the photo as the charged particles hit the camera!
Meanwhile, when Odyssey encountered energetic particles in Mars’ orbit, its star camera (which is used to orient the orbiter) was hit, knocking it momentarily offline. Even with a brief setback, the orbiter was still able to gather details on charged particles as well as X-rays and gamma rays with its High Energy Neutron Detector.
And it’s not just technology that can observe this phenomenon from particle explosions; people can too.
The “spots” and “streaks” seen on the camera on board Curiosity are not far from what astronauts see when their eyes are bombarded by particles from the radiation storm. In fact, astronauts aboard the ISS often describe seeing “fireworks” when they close their eyes. during radiation storms,” Tamitha Skov, a retired Aerospace Corporation scientist and a professor of space weather at Millersville University in Pennsylvania, told Space.com in an email.
“This is because an energetic particle will deposit some energy when it passes directly through the CCD sensor in a camera or the retina in the eye, and this deposited energy causes a false signal, making the camera or the eye believe mistakenly thinking you’re seeing a spot or a strip of light,” Skov added.
Scientists say this much radiation would not be lethal to humans, but it still serves as a reminder that future visitors to the Red Planet will need to be properly protected. The information gathered gives us a better understanding of how we can keep our Martian astronauts safe in the event of powerful solar storms, researchers say.
“Rock shelters or lava tubes would provide additional protection for an astronaut from such an event. In Martian orbit or in deep space, the dose rate would be significantly greater,” Don Hassler, principal investigator of RAD at Southwest Research Institute’s Solar System Science and Exploration Division. in Boulder, Colorado, said the same NASA announcement.
In addition to the safety of people on the Red Planet, scientists are also concerned about the development of agriculture there. Powerful solar storms like the one last month can make it harder to plant and grow enough food in the planet’s already challenging environment.
“Since growing plants requires sunlight, energy and lots of space, it will be difficult to grow enough food in lava tubes or caves, even if colonists are able to provide enough artificial light to support their growth,” Skov said. “Unlike on Earth, the atmosphere on Mars is so thin that energetic particles can penetrate all the way to the ground. This means that radiation storms, of one form or another, are a constant problem there. They are like a rain of easily falls on the surface, all the time”.
With sunspot region AR3697 now making its second appearance in front of Mars, researchers are looking forward to seeing what else they can learn from this sunspot that just won’t let go.
“The same group of sunspots is still active and orbiting Mars this week and may provide more events to help our understanding of the evolution and loss of the Martian atmosphere,” Thiemann said.
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