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When the Sun unleashed an extreme solar storm and hit Mars in May, it engulfed the red planet with auroras and an influx of charged particles and radiation, according to NASA.
The Sun has been showing more activity over the past year as it approaches the peak of its 11-year cycle, called solar maximum, which is expected to occur later this year.
In recent months, there has been an increase in solar activity, such as X-class flares, the strongest of solar flares, and coronal mass ejections, or large clouds of ionized gas called plasma, and magnetic fields erupting from the Sun’s outer atmosphere.
Solar storms that hit Earth in May sparked colorful auroras that danced across the skies in areas that rarely experience them, such as Northern California and Alabama.
The storms originated from a huge cluster of sunspots that were facing Earth. Then, this cluster of sunspots spun toward Earth’s cosmic neighbor: Mars.
Astronomers used the plethora of orbiters circling the Red Planet, as well as rovers traversing its surface, to capture firsthand the impacts of a solar storm on Mars — and to better understand what kind of radiation levels the first astronauts on the planet experienced. red you can try. in the future.
Solar radiation reaches Mars
The most extreme storm occurred on May 20 following an X12 flare emitted by the Sun, according to data collected by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft currently studying the Sun.
The massive explosion sent X-rays and gamma rays toward Mars, and a coronal mass ejection was quickly released shortly after the explosion, hurling charged particles toward the red planet.
The X-rays and gamma rays traveled at the speed of light and reached Mars first, followed by the charged particles within tens of minutes, according to scientists tracking moon activity from NASA to the Mars Space Weather Analysis Office at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale Crater south of the Martian equator, took black-and-white images using its navigation cameras during the solar storm. Snow-like white streaks seen in the images are the result of charged particles hitting Curiosity’s cameras, according to NASA.
The energy from the solar particles was so strong that the star camera aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which helps guide the probe as it circles the planet, momentarily turned off. Fortunately, the spacecraft was able to turn the camera back on within an hour. The last time Odyssey faced such extreme solar behavior was during solar maximum in 2003, when an X45 flare fried the orbiter’s radiation detector.
Meanwhile, Curiosity used its Radiation Assessment Detector, or RAD, to measure the amount of radiation that hit the planet during the storm. An astronaut near the rover would have experienced radiation equal to 30 chest X-rays, which is not deadly but is the largest burst of radiation the rover’s instrument has measured since landing nearly 12 years ago.
Understanding the spike in radiation that astronauts may experience on the Red Planet helps scientists plan how to protect those who will explore Mars with crew in the future.
“Cliffs or lava tubes would provide additional protection for an astronaut against such an event. In Mars orbit or deep space, the dose rate would be significantly higher,” said Don Hassler, RAD principal investigator in the Solar System Science and Exploration Division at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement. “I wouldn’t be surprised if this active region of the Sun continues to erupt, which would mean even more solar storms on Earth and Mars in the coming weeks.”
Auroras on the red planet
The MAVEN orbiter, short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN, got an aerial view of auroras dancing in ultraviolet light over Mars during the solar storm. The probe was launched on Mars in 2013 to study how the red planet lost its atmosphere over time and how space weather generated by the Sun interacts with the Martian upper atmosphere.
But these auroras look very different from the northern lights, or aurora borealis, and the southern lights, or aurora australis, that occur on Earth.
When energized particles from coronal mass ejections hit Earth’s magnetic field, they interact with gases in the atmosphere to create different colored lights in the sky, specifically near the poles.
But Mars lost its magnetic field billions of years ago, meaning the planet has no protection from incoming energized solar particles. So, when the particles reach Mars’ thin atmosphere, the reaction results in auroras that engulf the planet.
“Given the lack of a global magnetic field on Mars, Martian auroras are not concentrated at the poles as on Earth, but instead appear as a ‘diffuse global aurora’ associated with Mars’ ancient magnetized crust,” wrote Deborah Padgett. , task leader for the Operational Product Generation Subsystem at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., at the space agency’s headquarters Curiosity rover blog.
Future astronauts could one day witness these Martian light shows, according to NASA.
By tracking data from multiple Mars missions, scientists were able to observe how the solar storm unfolded.
“This was the largest solar energetic particle event MAVEN has ever seen,” said Christina Lee, MAVEN space weather lead at the University of California, Berkeley Space Science Laboratory, in a statement. “There have been several solar events in recent weeks, so we have seen wave after wave of particles hitting Mars.”
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