Much teamwork and collaboration go into making Daily Space, from writing to producing to hosting to editing and publishing. As science communicators, we also collaborate with other people, like Fraser Cain from Universe Today and all the folks we interview or have on as guests. That spirit of collaboration is important to the research endeavors of the science community, coming together as a large group of people on one project… and sometimes as nations sharing mission data.

Two missions orbiting Mars – NASA’s MAVEN and the United Arab Emirates’ Emirates Mars Mission – have recently shared data that led to the detection of patchy proton aurora at Mars. Previously discovered by MAVEN back in 2018, these proton aurorae occur when charged particles from the solar wind interact with Mars’ upper atmosphere. MAVEN and ESA’s Mars Express observed these aurorae as “smooth and evenly distributed”; however, these new observations found patchy versions of the aurora, likely caused by turbulent conditions in the atmosphere.

The results of the analysis were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters with lead author Mike Chaffin, who explains: EMM’s observations suggested that the aurora was so widespread and disorganized that the plasma environment around Mars must have been truly disturbed, to the point that the solar wind was directly impacting the upper atmosphere wherever we observed auroral emission. By combining EMM auroral observations with MAVEN measurements of the auroral plasma environment, we can confirm this hypothesis and determine that what we were seeing was essentially a map of where the solar wind was raining down onto the planet.

Teamwork makes the dream work, and these multi-vantage-point measurements help scientists put data into a wider context, revealing new phenomena and their mechanisms.

More Information

NASA press release

“Patchy Proton Aurora at Mars: A Global View of Solar Wind Precipitation Across the Martian Dayside From EMM/EMUS,” Michael S. Chaffin et al., 2022 August 31, Geophysical Research Letters