The Sun will be at peak activity this year, providing a rare opportunity to study how solar storms and radiation could affect future astronauts on the Red
This coronal mass ejection, captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, erupted on the Sun Aug. 31, 2012, traveling over 900 miles per second and sending radiation deep into space. Earth’s magnetic field shields it from radiation produced by solar events like this one, while Mars lacks that kind of shielding. Planet.
Earth’s magnetic field largely shields our home planet from the effects of these storms. But Mars lost its global magnetic field long ago, leaving the Red Planet more vulnerable to the Sun’s energetic particles. Just how intense does solar activity get on Mars? Researchers hope the current solar maximum will give them a chance to find out. Before sending humans there, space agencies need to determine, among many other details, what kind of radiation protection astronauts would require.
When a solar event occurs, scientists look both at the quantity of solar particles and how energetic they are. The MAVEN mission also leads an early warning system that lets other Mars spacecraft teams know when radiation levels begin to rise. The heads-up enables missions to turn off instruments that could be vulnerable to solar flares, which canBeyond helping to keep astronauts and spacecraft safe, studying solar maximum could also lend insight into why Mars changed from being a warm, wet Earth-like world billions of years ago to the freezing desert it is today.
Goddard Space Flight Center Heliophysics Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mars Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere And Volatile Evolution) The Solar System The Sun
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