By: Michael Xia

On May 20, a massive flare sent X-rays and gamma rays hurtling toward Mars, and a coronal mass ejection released quickly on the heels of the flare, flinging charged particles in the direction of the red planet.

Data from Europe’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft showed that an estimated X12 solar flare — the strongest type on the flare classification scale — erupted from the sunspot AR3664 (which was renamed AR3697 on its second trip around the sun). A powerful cornel mass ejection followed, sending a huge cloud of super hot solar plasma toward the red planet at millions of miles per hour.
The impacts from this solar event provided quite an education for scientists watching everything unfold. Researchers with NASA’s MAVEN orbiter, 2001 Mars Odyssey orbiter, and Curiosity Mars Rover each played key roles in capturing data from the event that will help us better understand our neighboring planet and plan for future crewed visits to it.

Curiosity’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument can pick up the most energetic particles, which get all the way down to the Red Planet’s surface, but it’s the less energetic ones that create the stunning auroras. That’s where MAVEN’s Solar Energetic Particle instrument comes into play, allowing scientists to take the measure of the aurora-creating energy and recreate the event.
“This was the largest solar energetic particle event that MAVEN has ever seen,” Christina Lee, MAVEN Space Weather Lead at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory, said in a recent NASA release. “There have been several solar events in past weeks, so we were seeing wave after wave of particles hitting Mars.”

Luckily there was no astronauts there. Scientists say this much radiation would not be deadly for humans, but it still serves to remind us that future visitors to the Red Planet will need to be properly shielded.