Survey of Electron Density Profiles From MARSIS Active Ionospheric Sounding

Details Survey of Electron Density Profiles From MARSIS Active Ionospheric Sounding Survey of Electron Density Profiles From MARSIS Active Ionospheric Sounding

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.p23d0084m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #P23D-0084

Computer Science

Sound

5400 Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets, 5405 Atmospheres (0343, 1060), 5421 Interactions With Particles And Fields, 5435 Ionospheres (2459)

Scientific paper

The Mars Express spacecraft, launched, 2 June 2003, and placed in orbit 25 December 2003, carries a radar instrument called Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS). This instrument operates in Subsurface and Active Ionospheric modes. The antennae for this instrument were deployed 17 June 2005. Thus the Active Ionospheric mode has been in operation for nearly a year and a half. All regions of the Martian surface have been nominally covered by the sounder. We have used a simple procedure to derive the electron density as a function of altitude from the digitized ionospheric trace of a large sampling of ionograms. These profiles can then be fit to a Chapman layer function. We here present a first summary of ionospheric sounding results at Mars including results of the inversion and Chapman fitting routines. Using ionogram data with the inversion results, we survey the spacecraft-local electron density, the measured ionospheric density maximum, the altitude of the ionospheric density maximum, the subsolar density maximum, the subsolar density maximum altitude, and the atmospheric neutral scale height. Our results include an increase in peak electron density during solar energetic particle events and an increase in electron density peak altitude in regions of high magnetic field. When sampling is restricted to instances of good fit to a Chapman layer, we derive a subsolar density peak altitude between approximately 100 and 150 km, a subsolar maximum density is between approximately 1.5 and 2.0x10**5 cm**-3, and a neutral scale height between approximately 12 and 22 km. All of these values are in rough agreement with what is known of the Martian ionosphere. All of these values appear to fall off at high solar zenith angles, reflecting spatial variation of the state of the Martian atmosphere.

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