After the Earth, the Sun struck Mars

This was recorded by Russian instruments operating on the Red Planet

At its maximum activity, on May 20, 2024, the Sun dealt a powerful blow to Mars. This was recorded by Russian nuclear physics instruments created at the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Fortunately, they themselves were not damaged.

Photo: ru.wikipedia.org

Let us recall that in the spring our luminary, which is at the very peak of its 25th eleven-year cycle, actively attacked the Earth. Powerful X-ray flares that occurred on it caused serious magnetic storms on Earth, which specialists have not recorded for many years. As a rule, as a result of powerful blows of solar plasma, radio electronics suffer, and near-Earth spacecraft fail. This spring, as a result of solar flares, several near-Earth spacecraft were damaged, the IKI RAS report says.

By the end of May, the active regions of the Sun that generate flares “turned away” away from the Earth, turning “face” to Mars. As a result, on May 20, 2024, a serious ejection of solar matter occurred on the Sun, which flew to Mars and was recorded by numerous scientific equipment of the orbital satellites of the Red Planet, as well as rovers operating on it. A message came to Earth about a “very strong solar proton event.”

Thus, a solar storm on Mars was recorded by Russian HEND nuclear physics instruments on board the Mars Odyssey orbiter. (NASA), FRIEND with the Bulgarian dosimeter «Lyulin» on board the TGO orbiter of the ExoMars 2016 mission and DAN on board the Curiosity rover (NASA).

They showed that the background radiation in the vicinity of Mars was 300 times higher!

Solar protons that reached the Martian surface produced a burst of secondary neutron radiation that exceeded the normal background (according to the detectors of the device DAN) three times. According to scientists from the Institute of Space Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences, such an effect has never been observed on Mars during the entire operation of the DAN instrument since the landing of the rover in the Martian Gale crater in August 2012.

This case showed how serious a damaging factor can be turn out to be streams of solar plasma for future manned expeditions to Mars.

According to preliminary estimates, the radiation dose that astronauts could receive if they were in Martian orbit on May 20, 2024, would be equal to the dose accumulated over six months of space exploration flight at “calm” Sun.