MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Ian O’Neill – “The sun battered the Earth’s magnetosphere with an ‘epic’ geomagnetic storm over the last couple of days, generating beautiful auroral displays at low latitudes. Now it’s Mars’ turn.

On Saturday (Oct. 22), a large bubble of solar plasma was blasted from the sun’s surface. Unlike the coronal mass ejection (CME) that struck us on Monday, Saturday’s CME was sent in a different direction — toward the Red Planet.

As per simulations carried out by NASA’s Goddard Space Weather Laboratory (shown below), the CME should have arrived in Mars orbit by now (Oct. 26). However, its impact on Mars will be very different than a CME’s impact on Earth.

For starters, Mars doesn’t have a protective global magnetic field — instead it has a ‘patchy’ magnetic field distributed all over the planet. One of the many problems future Mars explorers will face is the increased radiation environment on the Martian surface — the lack of a protective magnetic “shield” and a thin atmosphere means CME impacts and solar flare events are a health risk.” Read more.