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Ion escape fluxes from Mars
Author(s) -
Ma YingJuan,
Nagy Andrew F.
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2006gl029208
Subject(s) - mars exploration program , physics , flux (metallurgy) , solar wind , ion , solar cycle , atmospheric sciences , ionosphere , atmosphere of mars , environmental science , computational physics , astrobiology , geophysics , plasma , martian , materials science , nuclear physics , quantum mechanics , metallurgy
A 3D, multi‐species, non‐ideal MHD numerical code was used to calculate the ion escape fluxes from Mars. The calculations were carried out for six cases with different nominal solar wind, solar cycle and crustal field orientation conditions and the total escape fluxes (the sum of the three major ionospheric species, O + , O 2 + , and CO 2 + ) varied by about an order of magnitude from 2.7 × 10 23 to 2.4 × 10 24 sec −1 . These results were compared to the recently measured Mars Express results of 3.2 × 10 23 sec −1 (O + , O 2 + , and CO 2 + ), which were obtained near solar cycle minimum conditions, indicating a good agreement between measured and calculated fluxes. We also calculated the escape flux for “extremely” high solar wind conditions which leads to a flux of 3 × 10 25 sec −1 .