Hope Probe monitors discrete and proton auroras
DUBAI: The Hope probe has monitored natural phenomena related to separate and proton auroras on Mars for the first time, which opens new horizons for scientific studies by specialists and experts at the global level, as well as providing 4 packages of data and images to the world.
The Hope Probe project announced at the end of August 2022, in cooperation with the “MAVEN” project of the US space agency “NASA”, the detection of a new type of intermitent proton aurora around Mars, using an ultraviolet spectrometer, resulting from the interaction of the solar wind directly with the upper atmosphere of the side luminous light from Mars, slowing its speed and emiting ultraviolet radiation.
The images taken by the Hope probe are the first scientific observations in the world to monitor the spatial changes of the proton auroras on Mars, which made the project’s scientific team monitor the structure of the irregular protein aurora for the first time.
According to the images, the aurora appears in the form of luminous and scatered areas throughout the bright side of the planet, with two wavelengths of ultraviolet radiation associated with the hydrogen atom, Lyman beta 102.6 nm and Lyman alpha 121.6 nm, the bright side appears regular under normal conditions at these two wavelengths, where hydrogen atoms contribute to the brightness of the planet due to the scatering of sunlight.
The intermitent proton aurora appears according to 3 images taken by the Hope probe in different shapes and sizes, which were on August 5, 11 and 30, 2021, where the second image shows the spread of the aurora over a wide and irregular area. Last week, The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) 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.