HR: 0800h
AN: P41A-0197    [Abstracts]
TI: The Magnetic Field Induced by the Solar Wind on the Dayside of Mars
AU: * Akalin, F
EM: ferzan-akalin@uiowa.edu
AF: University of Iowa, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA 52242, United States
AU: Gurnett, D A
AF: University of Iowa, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA 52242, United States
AU: Averkamp, T F
AF: University of Iowa, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA 52242, United States
AU: Kirchner, D L
AF: University of Iowa, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa City, IA 52242, United States
AU: Acuna, M H
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AU: Connerney, J E
AF: Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United States
AU: Ness, N F
AF: Catholic University of America, Inst. for Astrophysics and Computational Science, Washington, DC 20064, United States
AU: Plaut, J J
AF: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, United States
AU: Picardi, G
AF: University of Rome "La Sapienza", Infocom Dept., Rome, 00184, Italy
AB: The Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionospheric Sounding (MARSIS) instrument on Mars Express can be used to measure the local magnetic field. The technique relies on the detection of the electron echoes. These are series of echoes that are equally spaced in time at the electron cyclotron period. The echoes are believed to be caused by the periodic return to the antenna of electrons that are accelerated during the sounder pulse by strong electric fields near the antenna. From the period of the echo, the magnetic field strength in the vicinity of the spacecraft can be computed. These scalar measurements are highly complementary to those obtained by the Mars Global Surveyor Magnetic Field Experiment (MAG/ER). The Cain et al. (2003) model is used for nightside magnetic field measurements where MARSIS data is from the dayside. The difference between the nightside and the dayside measurements is due to the electrical currents that flow in the dayside ionopause. An average magnetic field vector which is induced by the solar wind is calculated using a best-fit method for each periapsis pass. This result will contribute to the study of the Mars-solar wind interaction.
DE: 6225 Mars
DE: 7800 SPACE PLASMA PHYSICS
SC: Planetary Sciences [P]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting