By: Ethan Chau

In May 2024, the sun fired off a barrage of radiation-riddled outbursts, which caused iridescent displays of the Northern and Southern lights on Earth. However, Earth wasn’t the only planet in the solar firing line. Another planet was in the range of the outbursts. Something big was brewing.

A few days after Earth’s light show, another series of eruptions occurred. This time, however, the eruptions didn’t affect Earth. Instead, on May 20, Mars was blitzed by a series of eruptions.

The eruptions were formidable. Shannon Curry, the principal investigator of NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Orbiter, or MAVEN, at the University of Colorado, Boulder said, “This was the strongest solar energetic particle event we’ve seen to date.”

When the eruptions emerged, a solar flare, or an intense burst of radiation, hit Mars, which bathed the planet with X-rays and gamma rays. Following the solar flare was a potent coronal mass ejection or a buckshot of charged particles from the sun. Mathew Owens, a space physicist at the University of Reading, commented on the event and said, “They looked pretty fast to me.”

Mars’ thin atmosphere and the absence of a global magnetic field caused its surface to be showered by radiation. The amount of radiation that showered on the surface of Mars wasn’t a lethal dose but was certainly not pleasant to the human body.

Through scientific knowledge of atmospheric chemistry, Dr. Curry and other scientists concluded that observers on Mars would have seen a jade-green light show if they were to look at the auroras on the planet.

During the solar storm, some of Mars’ robotic residents were affected. Charged particles hit Curiosity’s navigation camera and the star tracker camera for Mars Odyssey orbiter. However, none of the spacecrafts were deeply damaged.

Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/science/mars-aurora-solar-storm.html