Dr Manish Patel Discovers Green Glow On Mars, Will Help In Safer Human Landings

We know Mars as the large red planet, filled with rust coloured craters and surfaces, but also as a planet that humans would one day call home.?

At least that’s what Elon Musk is trying hard for us.?For all of humanity, actually. That's the founding principle of SpaceX.

NASA

Researchers are constantly observing the red planet, either using the different NASA rovers or through orbiters, getting more information about the Martian surface each passing day.?

And now, Mars is showing an odd green glow on the outside.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this was captured by the Trace Gas Orbiter that’s currently making rounds of the red planet. And surprisingly, we've seen something like this on our planet too.

ESA

Have you heard about Northern Lights? The spectacular light shows that our planet shows in the North pole -- a result of Earth’s magnetic field channelling energised particles. The glow captured by Trace Gas Orbiter is not the same phenomenon as that, but it also isn’t unique to Mars entirely.

Green glow around Mars

The green glow around Mars isn’t clearly visible and the trick to that is the viewing angle you look through.?

Ann Carine Vandaele, co-author of the study states, “Previous observations hadn’t captured any kind of green glow at Mars, so we decided to reorient the UVIS nadir channel to point at the ‘edge’ of Mars, similar to the perspective you see in images of Earth taken from the ISS.”?

She added, “The emission was strongest at an altitude of around 80 km (49.7 mi) and varied depending on the changing distance between Mars and the Sun,”

Landing on Mars

Dr Manish Patel, a co-author of the study, said in a statement. “By looking at the altitudes of where this emission is, you can actually tell the thickness of the atmosphere and how it’s varying.?

So, if you were to keep observing this phenomenon, you could see the height of the atmosphere change, something it does for example when it heats up during dust storms.”

Ournews

Dr Patel further added, “This is an issue we face when we try to land on Mars because we’re never quite sure just how thick the atmosphere will be when we plough through it to get to the surface.”