Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Bow shock, where the solar wind first encounters the Martian environment, reflects the complex interplay between the solar wind and Martian upper atmosphere and crustal fields. However, a comprehensive understanding of Martian bow shock dynamics remains elusive due to limited multi-spacecraft observations. Here, leveraging the joint observations from China's Tianwen-1 and NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), we reveal Martian bow shock oscillations with a temporal scale of minutes and spatial extents of hundreds of kilometers during weakly disturbed solar wind. Our analysis of the observations along with three-dimensional simulations suggests that magnetosonic Mach number is the most sensitive parameter influencing the bow shock, and a slow solar wind stream that favors low Mach numbers may lead to the large-scale bow shock oscillations and the whole Martian space environment. This finding advances our understanding of the interactions between the solar wind and non-magnetized planets.
Source: Nature Communications
Institutions: University of Science and Technology of China, Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles, University of Iowa, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Le Mans Université, Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géosciences, Nantes Université, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Harbin Institute of Technology, Space Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Space Science Center, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Deep Space Exploration Laboratory
Language: English
Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $6,990
OpenAlex ID: W4415738229