These are the best images of the scattered auroras of the red planet. These images from the Hope spacecraft can help us understand how Mars lost its thick atmosphere billions of years ago.
As Mars once had a magnetic field, there are parts of the Martian crust that are still magnetized, hence the phenomenon called discrete aurora occurs over these areas.
The irregular glow of Mars auroras should be visible at night, but has never been seen in visible light. Hope used his ultraviolet spectrometer to capture the events several times over the past few months. These rare auroras are not linked to solar storms, but only occur in certain areas on the night side.
The snapshots show a ghostly glow known as a discrete aurora. The funny thing is that instead of being near the highest latitudes, like the auroras on Earth, they are found in seemingly strange places well above the surface of the red planet. The images were released five months after the United Arab Emirates became the fifth nation to enter the orbit of the red planet.
“The implications for our understanding of the atmospheric and magnetospheric science of Mars are tremendous and provide new support for the theory that solar storms are not necessary to drive the aurora of Mars,” says Hessa Al Matroushi, scientific director of the mission. .
The scientific goal of this mission is to study its atmosphere and provide a deep understanding of the changes on the planet from a water-rich world to the freezing, arid desert we see today.
The UAE established a space agency in 2014, sent its first astronaut to the International Space Station five years later, and plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the Moon in 2024.
