Mars’ ionosphere: The key for systematic exploration of the red planet

Abstract

The near three decades of continuous Mars’ exploration has opened the door to the understanding of the Martian space environment, which includes the solar wind, magnetosphere, ionosphere and atmosphere, and is a complex structure with simultaneous downward and upward couplings. However, we do not yet understand many of the physical processes that drive matter and energy flow between these couplings and within the various atmospheric reservoirs (including temporal and spatial changes on short time scales). Although each coupling plays an essential role for the system, understanding the fate of the ionosphere, as a natural sink of both internal (i.e., atmospheric cycles) and external (i.e., solar wind) energy inputs, is the key for a successful future systematic exploration of Mars.

Solar Energetic Particle Events Detected in the Housekeeping Data of the European Space Agency's Spacecraft Flotilla in the Solar System

“…Monitoring planetary Space Weather in the Solar System is currently a challenging but essential activity that requires a good knowledge of the Sun and solar wind conditions, the local space environments (including solar wind‐magnetosphere‐ionosphere coupling), and the interaction of each spacecraft with its local environment. Consequently, understanding the chain of processes that control Space Weather at any planet or spacecraft on various time scales is important to accurately forecast and prevent hazardous conditions for a mission, and ultimately humans, throughout the Solar System (e.g., Plainaki et al., 2016; Sanchez‐Cano, 2023b; Sánchez‐Cano et al., 2021). At the moment, there are several national monitoring programs in place for terrestrial Space Weather forecasting, for which, most of the information about radiation hazards comes from near‐Earth satellites, with a few exceptions such as the Cosmic Ray Telescope for the Effects of Radiation (CRaTER) (Spence, 2010) and Lunar Lander Neutron and Dosimetry (LND) (Wimmer‐Schweingruber et al., 2020) instruments on the surface of the Moon.…”