Martian ionospheric response during the may 2024 solar superstorm
Jacob Parrott (Imperial College London)
Beatriz Sánchez-Cano (University of Leicester)
Håkan Svedhem (TU Delft - Astrodynamics & Space Missions)
Olivier Witasse (European Space Agency (ESA))
Dikshita Meggi (University of Leicester)
Colin Wilson (European Space Agency (ESA))
Alejandro Cardesín-Moinelo (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía - CSIC, Instituto de Astrofisica e Ciencias do Espaço, European Space Astronomy Centre)
Ingo Müller-Wodarg (Imperial College London)
More Info
expand_more
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.
Abstract
Solar energetic events can have considerable effects on planetary ionospheres. However, the erratic nature of these solar energetic events make observations difficult. Here we show a mutual radio occultation observation, which serendipitously occurred just 10 minutes after a large solar flare impacted Mars. This resulted in the largest lower ionospheric layer ever recorded, where it was 278% its typical size. We used in-situ soft x-ray irradiance measurements to show a threefold increase in flux. This infers a different relation of soft X-ray to this layer's density than previously thought, with variations depending on the amount of spectrum 'hardening' leading to the increase of ionisation from secondaries.
help_outline