Scientists say the discovery left them ‘scratching their heads’
The UAE’s Hope spacecraft has made a landmark discovery of a new type of aurora on Mars.
Scientists with the mission are calling it the “sinuous discrete aurora”, a huge, worm-like aurora that extends halfway around the planet.
Aurorae are colourful lights that appear on a planet when solar activity disturbs its atmosphere.
On Earth, the aurora borealis and aurora polaris — known as northern lights — happens when protons and electrons from solar wind hit particles in the atmosphere, causing colourful lights in the sky.
On Mars, however, because of its lack of a global magnetic field and localised crustal magnetic fields in the southern hemisphere, there are three types of aurorae — proton, diffuse and discrete.
But the latest discovery has left scientists puzzled, creating new questions about the interactions between Mars’ atmosphere, the planet’s magnetic fields and the solar wind.
“When we first imaged Mars’ discrete aurora shortly after the Hope probe’s arrival at Mars in 2021, we knew we had unveiled new potential to make observations never before possible on this scale, and we took the decision to increase our focus on these auroras,” said Hessa Al Matroushi, science lead at the Emirates Mars Mission.
“We can obtain nearly whole-disc, synoptic snapshots of the atmosphere to investigate atmospheric phenomena and interactions. It means we are seeing discrete auroral effects on a massive scale and in ways we never anticipated.”
In June, the spacecraft captured the most detailed observations of the discrete aurora in Mars’ night side atmosphere.
Aurorae in Mars’ night side atmosphere are extremely rare to capture. However, Hope has a higher possibility of imaging the phenomenon than any other spacecraft because of its unique elliptical orbit around the planet. It observes the night side on each of its 55-hour orbits of the planet.
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