Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Dec 2006
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p23d0081c&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P23D-0081
Mathematics
Logic
2152 Pickup Ions, 2164 Solar Wind Plasma, 6225 Mars
Scientific paper
Results from Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Global Surveyor indicate that Mars harboured high amounts of liquid water on the surface in the past. In order for the water-associated geomorphologic features to form, the pressure in the atmosphere must have been at least a hundred times higher to produce the necessary greenhouse effect, required for liquid water to be in a stable. The present atmospheric pressure is only 6-9 mbar and moreover, the spectral imaging of Mars by the OMEGA-instrument suggests that the amount of carbonates stored in the surface is too low in order to explain the denser atmosphere in the past. This controversy led us to investigate the escaping plasma by analyzing the data from the IMA sensor (Ion Mass Analyzer) of the ASPERA-3 instrument suite onboard Mars Express. The IMA sensor measures the differential flow of ion components such as, H+, He2+, O+ and molecular ions within 20-80 M/q, in the energy range of 0.01-36 keV/q. Since the instrument design was optimized for studies of plasma dynamics, the mass resolution is not adequate to directly resolve CO2+ from O2+, were the latter is one of the main molecular ions that composes the Mars ionosphere. Therefore, a special multi-species fitting technique, using calibration and in-flight data, was developed to resolve the CO2+ peak from the neighbouring and much more intense O2+ peak. This technique was applied to the observations covering the period from April 4, 2004 to December 24, 2005. The events of heavy ion escape were identified inside the induced magnetosphere boundary and the Martian eclipse. It was found that the flux ratios of O2+/O+ and CO2+/O+ are 0.9 and 0.2, respectively. This confirms the Phobos-2 findings that the main escaping ion is singly ionized oxygen, but also shows for the first time that the molecular oxygen escapes almost equally as much. There is little carbon dioxide escape (relative to oxygen). We also correlate the ion-beams with the IMF clock angle by using data from the magnetometer onboard the satellite Mars Global Surveyor.
Barabash Stas
Budnik E.
Carlsson Erik
Fedorov Arkady
Grigoriev Alexei
No associations
LandOfFree
Analysis of the Mass Composition of the Escaping Plasma at Mars does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Analysis of the Mass Composition of the Escaping Plasma at Mars, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Analysis of the Mass Composition of the Escaping Plasma at Mars will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-961565