Emirates Mars Mission Discovers New Kind of ‘Patchy’ Mars Proton Aurora

Emirates Mars Mission Discovers New Kind of ‘Patchy’ Mars Proton Aurora

The Emirates Mars Mission, the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, has made first observations of a new type of proton aurora around Mars. The spatially variable ‘patchy’ proton aurora potentially triggers new insights into unexpected behaviours in the Martian atmosphere. The EMM team has worked together with NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) mission to fully characterise these observations. The combination of EMM’s unprecedented global aurora images with MAVEN’s simultaneous local plasma observations opens up new avenues for understanding the drivers of Mars’ enigmatic aurora. “Our discovery of these patchy proton aurora adds a new kind of event to the long list of those currently studied by EMM and challenges our existing views of how the proton aurora on Mars’ dayside are formed,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, EMM’s Science Lead. “The EMM Hope probe has so far uncovered many unexpected phenomena that extend our understanding of Mars’ atmospheric and magnetospheric dynamics. These new observations, combined with MAVEN data, have lifted the lid on entirely new possibilities for scientific research.” This new patchy type of proton aurora is formed when the solar wind directly impacts Mars’ dayside upper atmosphere and emits ultraviolet light as it slows down.